Compromise is one of the few founding ideals we can know with absolute certainty that the founders of our republic held. Compromise, they reasoned, was what it took to ensure level-headed citizens weren’t steamrolled by an inflamed, irrational, and power-hungry faction.

They got that one right.

Compromise is the system by which opposing ideas are reconciled and amended to allow for the common good, but the system is only as valuable as its input, and one specific faction hasn’t been giving compromise much to work with.

The Republican Party has became the self-proclaimed “Party of No,” and, for political gain, have tried their hardest to oppose Barack Obama, even on issues they used to support.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is now the face of a party who is drooling over the prospect of repealing Obamacare. Apparently, they didn’t get the memo that Romney had the idea first. This should be to his credit, but his party feels otherwise.

Republican opposition isn’t inherently a bad thing. If they don’t agree with Democratic and Independent policies simply because their base wants them to be unanimously opposed to working their problems out, they have that democratic right.

The problem is that the average American is placing the blame on both parties, with hatred for “politics as usual” at an all time high. Republican candidates for the House took the nation by storm in 2010 when they rode into Washington on a contradictory promise to fix things by not letting anything get done. The House has barely budged beyond party lines ever since.

President Barack Obama, at the Democratic National Convention, encapsulated perfectly the mindset that a significant portion of Independent voters view as partisan gridlock. They’re not looking at the whole picture. Obama said that there is no way he would concede to more trillion-dollar tax cuts that Independent economists all recognize as failures.

Obama’s move is the right one, but it puts forth the false image that Democrats as well as Republicans can’t work together. In reality, there’s no reason for any party to have to embrace notions that simply don’t agree with the facts.

At both party conventions, we heard the parties agreeing about the value of hard work, the glory of American perseverance, and how great our values are. This unity is rarely extended beyond rhetoric in political speeches, and that makes a lot of political sense, but very little of any other kind of sense.

The Democratic Party has had a hard time convincing the American people that they’re trying their hardest to integrate ideas that are fundamentally not integratable. It’s a tough sell, and they should adopt a different approach.

Compromise simply isn’t possible with a party that wants to stop the passage of time. Their platform wants to add a constitutional amendment preventing gay marriage. They support, again, in their platform, opposing abortion even in the cases of rape and incest.

In both cases, most Americans disagree.

Our government isn’t doing as much as it could, primarily because half of it wants to dull any force for good that it may have left.

The problem isn’t that politicians can’t compromise, it’s that reactionary and outdated opinions are deeply entrenched. I hope the voters change their tune a little quicker.