E Pluribus Unum

"Now, politics demands compromise...and even the most partisan among us have to understand that. But we must never forget that compromise and bipartisanship are means, not ends, and are properly employed only in the service of higher principles.

"It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first principle. For the true statesmen ... are not defined by what they compromise, but by what they don't."

---Tom DeLay, in his farewell speech to the House Republicans, June 2006