Ending The Blumenauer Gambit
“I was convinced that … it would somehow take the steam out of the Newt Gingrich-Tom Delay Congress,” writes Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR). “My hope was to simply move on and get to more pressing business at hand.”
Blumenauer offers this as background to an apology for what he calls the “worst vote” of his political career: Supporting the Defense of Marriage Act, which codified into Federal law a definition of marriage restricted to one man and one woman.
I’m not so much interested in the DOMA issue specifically here. Instead, I wish Democrats would come to understand the moral of Blumenauer’s story, even if he himself never actually draws this larger conclusion: If you give a sop to the Right it will only ever backfire on you.
Whether it’s an attempt to “take the steam out” of their overall efforts (as in the case Blumenauer describes), or an attempt to bring them to the table (as in the current case of health care reform), conceding ground to or “compromising” with the Right will only ever embolden them, and in fact not infrequently strengthen them.
They aren’t interested in discussion and debate, or in some deliberative legislative process in which the marketplace of ideas and ideals clash and parry, in the end yielding a constructive solution to this national concern or that. They’re interested only in leveraging every advantage made available to them to further their narrow, invariably narrow-minded, and often simply factually wrong agenda.
There is no common table at which to sit with the Right. There is no compromise with the Right. To them, a show of compromise by their opponents isn’t seen as an invitation to further discussion and common progress. It isn’t seen as civility.
To them, it’s simply a sign of weakness, the baring of one’s naked throat to their waiting teeth.
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