Occupiers: Real Enemies of Compromise

Are occupiers the new obstructionists? That’s what conservative columnist Marc Thiessen says in today’s Washington Post column, blaming the movement’s ideological stubbornness for the failure of the deficit-reduction supercommittee. While liberals like to cast antitax crusader Grover Norquist as the villain of the congressional negotiations, in reality Republicans showed they were willing to part from “no new taxes” orthodoxy to get a deal. Democrats, on the other hand, were obsessed with raising taxes on the rich—a key tenant of the Occupy belief system. If you’re looking for the real enemies of compromise, “look no further than the encampments of Zuccotti Park.”