Political compromise on contentious issues is not only possible, it is a critical ingredient in a functioning democracy. But it is apparent that our Congressional leaders skipped that lesson in their high school civics classes.

It is obvious to me that the Republicans never did intend to compromise. Their sole agenda seems to be the defeat of President Obama and they are willing to risk the stability of America in order to accomplish that goal.

Their “negotiating” position is very clear: You give us everything we want, and in return we will give you nothing.

At first they demanded three trillion dollars worth of budget cuts in return for their votes to raise the nation’s debt limit. When the President upped it to four trillion, they moved to two. And they insist that the entire amount must come from cuts, and nothing from revenue increases… even if those increases are limited to one-fourth of the package and would apply only to eliminating tax subsides for businesses and wealthy individuals.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, has floated a “solution” that would require the President to ask for an increase in the limit; Congress would vote it down; the President would veto their vote; and Democratic members of the Senate and House would vote to uphold the veto. And this process would be done in increments so that three such votes would be held before the 2012 election.

Cleverly disingenuous! Under the McConnell proposal Republicans would take the politically popular road of voting against the debt limit increase three times prior to November 2012, while the Democratic President and the Democrats in the House and Senate would have to go on record three times in support of the politically unpopular (but absolutely necessary) increase.

If this idea were adopted, McConnell and his henchmen would have their cake and be able to eat it too. They would escape any blame for financial tragedy because it would be averted, and they would be able to skewer the President and Democratic candidates. Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri has it figured out. She said bluntly that McConnell “has lost his mind.”

Speaking on the Morning Joe program on MSNBC, she told host Joe Scarborough (a former Republican Congressman) that “I would just say, Mitch, honestly, with a straight face, do a press conference and say ‘Here is the solution to the problem: Let the Democrats do it and we want them to do it three times before the next election and it will be OK with us if they do it as long as we don’t have to touch it.’ And people aren’t ridiculing that?”

Eric Cantor, the Republican Majority Leader in the House, is another candidate for ridicule. He stomped out of the six-person bipartisan debt limit negotiations simply because the other five insisted on at least discussing a revenue increase as part of the deficit fix.

He has stubbornly and belligerently obstructed (according to reports) the negotiations being held in the White House between the President and Congressional leaders over the same issue. His position is “my way or no way”.

He repeatedly makes the point that unless the Democrats capitulate completely, he will not provide the Republican votes to pass the legislation. Then, out of the other side of his mouth, he blames the Democrats for refusing to compromise.

This is Cantor’s idea of compromise: Place your arms straight out ahead of you, shoulder high with palms facing one another. The left hand is the Democrats, and the right hand the Republicans. Now, Republicans say compromise, and Democrats move half way (move your left hand half way toward the right). Then Republicans move an equal distance to the right (move your right hand to the right so that the initial distance between the two hands is restored). And the Republicans say “see… we have made no progress, the Democrats refuse to close the gap.” The fact is that the Democrats have moved so far right that they are approaching the Republican starting point.

The Richmond, Virginia Times-Dispatch reported in a June 26 article that when he “graduated from the private Collegiate School in 1981, Eric Cantor chose as the quote that accompanied his portrait in the yearbook, the Torch, a lyric from an operetta by Henry Blossom: ‘I want what I want when I want it.’”

As Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader said, Cantor is acting like a child and has “shown he shouldn’t be at the table.”

This mess reminds me of a story that the late Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater told in 1992. A group of us (the Senator, the CEO of one of Arizona’s largest corporations, the Episcopal Bishop of Arizona and I) were gathered prior to a press conference called to announce our support of a Phoenix ordinance to prohibit employment discrimination against gay and lesbian people in City employment.

The Senator was upset about attacks on him from fellow Republicans because they believed he had become too liberal. There was even a campaign underway to remove the iconic name of Goldwater from the party headquarters building.

I asked  “Senator, what is the difference between politics in your day and politics today?” He responded that in his time he and Senator Hubert Humphrey would spend the day arguing opposite sides of legislation. “Then he would go home and pick up Muriel and I would go home and pick up Peggy, and we would go to dinner together. Despite our political differences we genuinely liked one another.

“And what we had in common was a vision for America, but we differed on how to make that vision reality. For instance, we agreed that poverty was a moral blemish on the nation, but we disagreed on solutions. He thought the government programs were the way, and I thought that the solution lay outside of government.

“But the important point is that the shared principle was eradicating poverty, and that there was a lot of room for compromise between his methods and mine. To these people today, there is no agreement on a vision, and there is no room for compromise. And they don’t just want to win, they want to eradicate their enemy.”

It seems that political Washington in 2011 is the political Arizona of 1992. And if you want a glimpse of the future of politics in Washington, just look at Arizona politics today.

Every American should be paying close attention to this issue. Refusing to raise the debt limit (as it was done seven times during the George W. Bush Presidency) will initiate a financial meltdown that could take the USA and the world into depression.

There is no question that the deficit needs to be reduced, but that is a different and a multi-year issue that should be dealt with on a different track.

Most economists see it that way; most business leaders see it that way; the President and Democrats in Congress see it that way. But a rightwing Republican House sees it another way, and its members are holding the entire nation hostage to a radical and destructive agenda.