today they don t compromise and blame the other party. why not strike a deal and then blame boehner for the parts of the deal you don t like and he can blame you for the parts he doesn t like. well, couple of things. first of all, i think chris it s fair to say i have always been prepared to not only negotiate, but to go ahead and push forward on principled compromises. in fact, sometimes on your station msnbc i ve been blasted for being too willing to compromise. so the problem is not generally speaking on the democratic side. and obviously i m partisan here, but objectively i think you can look at it and say that the big challenge we ve got is you ve got a faction of the republican party that sees compromise as a dirty word that has moved so far to the right, that it would be difficult for a ronald reagan to win the nomination for the republican party at this point.
we ve rarely had power in one party for more than a year or two. they used to compromise. my argument is they used to compromise and blame the other party for the parts they don t like. why not strike a deal and then you can blame boehner for the parts you don t like and he can blame you for the parts he doesn t like. couple of things. first of all. why not compromise? i think, chris, it s fair to say that i have always been prepared to not only negotiate, but to go ahead and push forward on principled compromises. in fact, sometimes on your station, msnbc i ve been blasted for being too willing to compromise. so the problem is not generally speaking on the democratic side. and obviously i m partisan here. but objectively i think you can look at it and you can say that the big challenge we ve got is
done because we have a divided country, a divided congress. but that s the nature of america. they have an aisle down the middle of the senate. an aisle down the middle of the house. they ve always been there. we ve rarely had one party in power for more than a year or two. so we stuck with this as long as we have two parties running our government, they can t compromise. they used to compromise. my argument is in the old days they would compromise and then blame the other party for the parts they didn t like. today they don t compromise and blame the other party. why not strike a deal and then blame boehner for the parts of the deal you don t like and he can blame you for the parts he doesn t like. well, couple of things. first of all, i think chris it s fair to say i have always been prepared to not only negotiate, but to go ahead and push forward on principled compromises. in fact, sometimes on your station msnbc i ve been blasted for being too willing to
but to go ahead and push forward on principled compromises. in fact, sometimes on your station, msnbc, i ve been blasted for being too willing to compromise. so the problem is not, generally speaking, on the democratic side. jon: that s as if to say if you get criticized by msnbc as a compromiser, you must be really bending over backwards. well, the president is right, he has gotten flak from the left on msnbc when he s tried, often unsuccessfully, to reach compromise with the republicans. i thought matthews tried when he said thank you for coming, mr. president, the people who watch my show, most of them are your loyalists, they appreciate it. chris matthews was playing to his base, and having made a strategic decision, he was just not going to press the president of the united states very hard in this sit-down. jon: well, if any of our viewers
have two parties running our government. they can t compromise. they used to compromise. my argument is, in the old days they would compromise and then blame the other party for the parts of the compromise they didn t like. today they don t compromise and blame the other party. he can blame you for the parts that he doesn t like. well, a couple of things. first of all, i think, chris, it s fair to say i have always been prepared to not only negotiate but to go ahead and push forward on principled compromises. in fact, sometimes on your stations on msnbc i ve been blasted for too willing to compromise. so the problem is not generally speaking on the democratic side and obviously i m partisan here but objectively i think you can look at it and you can say that the big challenge we ve got is you ve got a faction of the