The Art of Compromise

How to evaluate political strategy

Some words seem to trigger immediate reactions—one common example is “compromise.” In politics, it’s a word loaded with meaning, often provoking suspicion or even hostility. Yet nearly every legislative achievement in American history has involved some form of compromise. Still, many in today’s political climate see it as a dirty word, used by unprincipled people to excuse surrender. I fully expect to be excoriated by some of the usual suspects for this essay, but I invite you to read until the end before disagreeing with my perspective here.

A couple of days ago, Sen. Glenneda Zuiderveld posted a Substack newsletter warning that compromise is the enemy of liberty. Take a few minutes to read the whole thing before coming back here.

It’s one thing to compromise on where to go to dinner, what movie to watch, or where to take a vacation. Those compromises are simple they build relationships and keep the peace.

But compromising on policies, taxes, and appropriations? That’s an entirely different story.

…

Yes, the Founders compromised on certain details but they never compromised on core principles like liberty, limited government, personal responsibility, and God-given rights.

So the real question is this:
Are we compromising on preferences or are we surrendering principles?

Because once we start surrendering principles, we aren’t “doing something for Idaho.”
We’re doing something to Idaho.

I’ve been pondering this idea over the past few days; specifically trying to figure out what is the difference between compromising on “certain details” and compromising on “core principles”. I fully agree with the senator that lawmakers must never budge on principles. I’ve been writing for years about how the Republican Party has spent the better part of a century compromising with the Democrats, resulting in a steady leftward shift in our nation.

Still, I believe the issue deserves closer examination, because compromise is a political tool that can be used for good or for ill. This essay is not a rebuttal to Sen. Zuiderveld, with whom I generally agree on this issue, but rather a reflection on the idea of compromise as a political tactic.

Politics in a republic necessarily requires some level of compromise. We don’t have a king or dictator who simply issues decrees. Instead, we elect representatives to debate ideas until they arrive at something that can earn majority support. Here in Idaho, that means getting at least 36 legislators, 18 senators, and one governor on board.

Many people believe that the rightness of an idea should be enough to carry the day. Unfortunately, that’s not how representative government works. All ideas must pass through the gauntlet of consensus, which is why both the Art of the Possible and the Art of the Deal matter. Contrary to popular suspicion, dealmaking is not inherently corrupt; rather it is essential if you want to pass any policy, no matter how principled the original idea may be.

As Thomas Sowell said, “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.” Refusing to compromise—refusing trade-offs—in pursuit of the perfect solution is a recipe for paralysis. But that raises an important question: how do you know the difference between a negotiable detail and a non-negotiable principle?

Let’s use the Founding Fathers as an example. When delegates gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to amend the Articles of Confederation, they had several competing priorities. Protecting individual rights was paramount for the faction later known as the Anti-Federalists. For the Federalists, creating a strong national government was the chief concern. Delegates from small states also wanted to prevent large states from dominating them.

Every compromise at the Constitutional Convention revolved around these three core issues: How should congressional representation be apportioned? How powerful should the executive branch be? Was a Bill of Rights necessary?

In the end, the delegates produced the Constitution, which was not handed down from God, but the product of a great deal of negotiation between men with differing principles and priorities. And that document has guided our nation for nearly 250 years.

Before you can determine whether compromise is necessary, you must first define your goal. Are you trying to lower taxes? Reduce spending? Implement a new policy? Maintain the status quo? Whether compromise is a helpful tool or a harmful concession depends entirely on your objective.

Picture a football game. If you’re on offense, starting at your own 20-yard line, your goal is to move 80 yards and score a touchdown. Anything that advances you—whether a four-yard run up the middle or a 60-yard pass—is good. Anything that pushes you backward, like a quarterback sack or worse, a turnover, is bad.

If you’re on defense, your goal is to stop the other team from gaining ground. Any yardage they gain is a loss for you, so your job is to play solid defense, sack their quarterback, and create opportunities for turnovers.

You get the picture. Now apply the analogy to politics: you have a goal, so anything that moves you toward that goal is potentially helpful. If your goal is to maintain the status quo, then that is where you must draw a hard line and refuse to budge.

Sen. Zuiderveld’s post focused on the state budget, which continues to outpace both inflation and population growth year after year:

When has compromise ever led to lower taxes, less government spending, or more personal freedom? If compromise really worked, why are we $37 trillion in debt? Why has Idaho’s budget exploded from $7 billion in 2016 to $13.9 billion in 2025, with $2.9 billion in continuous spending? Where are the success stories?

If your political goal is to reduce spending, then compromise on that issue clearly works against you. The system assumes spending will increase, and it takes significant effort and political capital just to slow that growth. If you want to spend $0 on a particular budget item, while others want to spend $1 million, then any compromise means spending more than you want. On the other hand, if the $1 million bill is set to pass anyway, but you have enough support for an amendment reducing it to $750,000, then should you do it? That is the sort of hard choice that our lawmakers often face.

But what about other issues?

Take school choice, for example. If your goal is to implement a system where funding follows the student, then you’re trying to create a new policy. In that case, compromise may be useful. The status quo heading into the 2025 legislative session was zero school choice—no money following the student. So any new policy could be considered progress, so long as it doesn’t contain poison pills.

The Gang of Eight supported a personal bill, House Bill 1, which would have created a $250 million program with $9,500 tax credits per eligible child. As a personal bill, H1 was never actually under consideration, but it set a marker for what conservative lawmakers wanted to see. House Bill 93, which ultimately passed and was signed by Gov. Brad Little, created a $50 million program with $5,000 tax credits per child.

Let’s return to the football analogy. Starting from the 20 yard line is the status quo: no school choice. 80 yards away is the end zone—put H1 and its $9,500 tax credits over there. Somewhere around midfield, or maybe within field goal range, is H93, which is what became law. You could call H93 a compromise, but it moved our state in the desired direction. Should we see the demand for school choice that we expect, then the Legislature will return to the line of scrimmage for a new play, getting us closer to the ideal goal.

Now consider abortion. Today, abortion is banned in Idaho, with only a few narrow loopholes. The pro-abortion left, along with a few unfortunate Republicans, want to move us in a more permissive direction. Again, back to football. This time we’re on defense, with our opponents on their own 20 yard line where abortion is illegal. Any movement in the other direction—no matter how small—takes us further from where we want to be. Compromise on this issue, therefore, is entirely negative. Pro-life conservatives have nothing to gain by compromising here.

In short, compromise is like a gun in that it is not inherently good or evil. It’s a tool that can be used for either. It can move us closer to our political goals or further away. Lawmakers must be wise enough to know how and when to use this tool to advance freedom and conservative values.

The flip side of fearing compromise is when lawmakers treat compromise as an end in itself. You don’t see it as much anymore, but incumbent candidates used to proudly tout their record of “reaching across the aisle” to “get things done” in Congress or the Legislature. Some even went so far as to fetishize the idea of compromise, acting as if it were inherently virtuous to give up their own principles in service of bipartisanship. Go back and watch the debate among Idaho Republicans who opposed House Bill 71 in 2023, which protected children from irreversible drugs and surgeries in the name of transgenderism, for multiple examples of this mindset.

The ongoing debate over H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill, is a prime example of the frustrating but necessary role of compromise. Many of the priorities President Trump won on in 2024 are wrapped up in this single piece of legislation: stronger border enforcement, finishing the wall, taxing remittances to foreign nations, making the 2017 tax cuts permanent, eliminating welfare for illegal aliens, implementing work requirements for able-bodied adults, ending taxes on tips and overtime, defunding Planned Parenthood, and more.

Given the current Senate structure and the partisan makeup of Congress, this may be the only shot to pass these policies. That means compromise is necessary to keep majority support in both chambers. Many of the objections raised by Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Thomas Massie would require 60 Senate votes to overcome a filibuster. Democrats are united against the entire Trump agenda, so a handful of Republicans have the power to derail everything.

Is that ideal? Of course not. It would be so much better to have a 65% Republican majority, all committed to cutting spending and implementing conservative policies. But that’s not the reality. Refusing to compromise here risks killing the entire MAGA agenda, which would result in no new border enforcement, no wall, no taxes on remittances, and a major tax hike as the 2017 cuts expire. Who benefits from that?

Finally, there’s one more argument I occasionally hear—not necessarily from anyone in Idaho—that says we shouldn’t give an inch, because if America collapses into a socialist hellhole, people will come crawling back to liberty. This idea has gained traction after Zohran Mamdani’s primary win in New York City. The theory goes that if New Yorkers suffer under true socialism, they’ll finally embrace a Hayek-toting champion who slashes government and revives liberty.

But revolutions rarely unfold that way. History shows that socialist regimes blame their failures on capitalist saboteurs. My former home state of Washington hasn’t elected a Republican governor since 1980—before I was born—and voters throughout the ‘90s and 2000s routinely said, “Sure, Democrats have made things bad, but Republicans would be worse.”

Accelerationism is not a viable strategy. Once you set out to break a system, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to rebuild it. It’s the equivalent of throwing yourself in front of a train to collect an insurance payout. That’s why I believe compromise, while never to be embraced lightly, is often necessary to achieve our political goals in both the short term and the long run.

To that end, we need lawmakers who are wise enough to compromise when necessary on policy details while holding firm to their bedrock principles. We also need voters who understand how the process works and who evaluate their representatives not against an impossible ideal, but within the reality they face. As citizens of a constitutional republic, we entrust legislative, executive, and judicial authority to a small group of men and women, relying on them to act in the best interest of all.

As a citizen and a voter, it’s your duty to evaluate your legislators and ask whether they’re moving the ball toward our goals, or constantly fumbling it in the backfield. Are they making wise compromises that advance a more conservative Idaho, or are they giving the game away to the other side?

Feature image Hulton Archive/Getty Images