Politics

DeMint: Just say ‘no’ to compromise

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South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint is just saying “no” to compromise with liberals.

“I can guarantee you the [Super Bowl] coaches are not telling their players to go out on the field and cooperate and compromise with the other team,” DeMint said at The Heritage Foundation’s Blogger’s Briefing Tuesday, during a discussion about his new book “Now or Never.”

“There is a reason for that, the other team has an opposite goal, they are there to beat you,” he said.

According to the Senate’s most conservative member — as measured by the National Journal — an atmosphere of competition over compromise is as poignant in the nation’s capitol as it has ever been. Compromise, to DeMint, is simply unrealistic.

In the South Carolina senator’s Super Bowl analogy of Washington, the two teams are divided along ideological, yet incompatible lines.

“One team believes in centralized economic and political power, collective planning, concentration here in Washington,” DeMint explained. “The other team — while it has been maybe erratic in supporting those principles we believe in — believes in the decentralized, individualistic approach to America. It is very difficult to compromise with another team that does not have the same goal of limited government, individual liberty.”

DeMint pointed out that the general trend has been toward more centralization of power, especially in the past few years, with economic stimulus legislation, Dodd-Frank financial regulations and health care reform. (RELATED: Full coverage of Jim DeMint)

“What has happened in the last few decades is more and more concentration of power in Washington,” he said, describing the trend as running contrary to the founding fathers’ intentions.

This November, DeMint said, will be a “make or break” time for deciding the country’s direction.

“The country does not belong to politicians, it belongs to the people,” he said. “If they want to keep their freedom, if they want to keep American exceptionalism, it really depends on the people having a major intervention with Washington this November and I think it’s a make or break time,” he said.

“I don’t think we can take four more years of what we are doing right now and expect this country to be anything like we want it to be in the future,” DeMint added.

DeMint said there is time to steer the country toward a different direction, and said a long presidential primary wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if it preps candidates for the general election.

According to DeMint, all the GOP presidential primary candidates have improved over the course of the campaign.

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Caroline May