The resignation of House Speaker John Boehner provides a learning moment: The left has no greater asset than modern politicians on the right. Conservative purists, to the left's delight, snub incremental victories that are the building blocks of all successful endeavors. Boehner, by contrast, has neglected to fight for the right side of his caucus.

Whether talking wealth, bridges, wars or social renaissance, victories are built one battle, one brick, one dollar, one supporter at a time. Boehner understood this principle.

"We've got groups here in town, members of the House and Senate here in town, who whipped people into a frenzy believing they can accomplish things that they know — they know — are never going to happen," said Boehner, who announced his resignation from Congress last week after growing increasingly frustrated by uncompromising members of his caucus.

Boehner's critics have characterized him as a moderate, a "squish," and even a RINO — Republican in Name Only. That's not rational, given his 94 percent rating on positions by the American Conservative Union, his 100 percent rating by the National Right to Life Committee, his "A" rating by the National Rifle Association and his zero score by NARAL Pro-Choice America. Boehner is a conservative by any fair assessment of his long-term voting record.

The speaker's problem with his base is one involving strategy and style, not political philosophy.

Boehner's critics were right to question his strength, as he too often exuded an attitude of predestined defeat. Conservative values have never taken more of a beating in the modern era than under Boehner's watch.

Boehner didn't like to squander political capital on battles the party could not win. Though he avoided fights he should have engaged, he rightly opposed charades that featured Republicans tilting at windmills for the appeasement of purists and talk radio entertainers. He wanted to play by the legitimate rules of engagement in a two-party town — one in which Republicans don't control the White House, lack majorities required to override presidential vetoes and the 60 votes to stop Democratic filibusters in the Senate. He wanted what he could get, rather than nothing at all.

"Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer," wrote 19th century Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson, a Tory conservative.

President Ronald Reagan best described the inevitability of political compromise in his autobiography "An American Life":

"When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn't like it. 'Compromise' was a dirty word to them and they wouldn't face the fact that we couldn't get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don't get it all, some said, don't take anything. I'd learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: 'I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.' If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that's what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it."

Speaking on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday, Boehner offered advice for his successor, whomever that may be.

"In our system of government, it's not about Hail Mary passes. It's the Woody Hayes school of football — three yards and a cloud of dust. Three yards and a cloud of dust. It's a slow, methodical process."

"The Gipper" would agree. He would also tell the next speaker to step up the game quite a bit. The Republican Party doesn't lack for pure, doctrinaire conservatives in Congress with uncompromising values. It lacks patient conservatives with the will, confidence and strategic ability to win.

REPRINTED FROM THE COLORADO SPRINGS GAZETTE