Its a curse more than a blessing.
Pragmatic short-term victories that will have a lasting long-term effect.
That's the name of the game right now because the GOP since 2009 has thrown out "negotiating in good faith" out the window. Ask for the moon and complain when you don't get what you want by blaming the Dems.
It's all projection for Trump and the GOP.
It's easy to blame the otherside for not cooperating when you change the goal posts of starting point negotiations every week so you don't actually have to govern or be seen as compromising.
The GOP have turned Obama and Dems into such a mythical creature paradox that even being seen compromising with them is a sign of weakness. Besides, if they're as truly evil as they are why would you even negotiate with them to begin with? Like you and others have said for the last 2 years. Now that Trump is in office the GOP no longer cares about balanced budgets, deficits, or national debt. Come 2021 inauguration day if Donnie isn't up there we're going to hear about it again.
Everyone should have seen this when Obama gave Boehner and McConnell almost everything and bent over backwards on the Grand Bargain, and GOP leadership balked and refused even then.
In a democracy that works, when the spending party is in power it offers spending ideas and the conservative party's job is to minimize the spending and eradicate bad ideas but at the end of the day there's compromise. If the conservative party is in power, it's their job to find things to cut and its the minority party's job to minimize the damage by fighting to not cut things that are working. But we don't even get that with this Modern GOP Party. It's basically do as I say, whether I'm in the minority or majority.