Compromise would possibly allow the current government to actually DO something, which may make them look effective and thus increase their chances of re-election. The opposition here in Australia is doing the same thing, constant negativity and blocking every piece of legislation they can, all on the premise of "holding the government to task and making sure they are accountable" when it is obvious to anyone that can think the reason is purely to hamstring the government to increase their own chance at election. Sure some policies are bad and need to be opposed, but it has gotten to the stage where the opposition party will cripple the country, so long as they are confident they can shift the blame to an "ineffective" government.
I know, it's disgusting.
It's not as bad here in Canada, but that's basically because every party not in power has imploded recently. At the federal level, the once upon a time "natural ruling" party, the Liberal Part of Canada, gradually decayed after the sponsorship scandal and is now left in tatters, without a leader after having chewed up four leaders over the last five elections. The New Democratic Party's (new official opposition) leader died to prostate cancer, so there's also a huge void there. The Bloc Québécois got decimated and the leader left as a result, so again, huge void there. Provincially speaking, the Parti Québécois (official opposition) had huge dissent a few months back, many MPs bailed out, two of them are joining to form a new party. An old-time ex-PQ guy who had quite long ago is also forming a new party promising lots of change (details are, imo, intentionally sketchy as he knows people want change, but wouldn't agree on what kind of change). One of the opposition parties is thinking of merging with this new party...
Both at the federal (Conservative Party of Canada) and provincial (Parti Libéral du Québec), the ruling parties stand strong against crippled opposition. But since they have majority governments anyways, the opposition couldn't do !@#$ even if they were organized. Considering our economic situation isn't as bad as the US', I'd honestly happily trade the political context. I'd rather the PLQ be paralyzed than it be allowed to continue screwing us over. And it's fairly clear that if they had a minority government and the opposition wasn't in such turmoil, we'd have the same blind partisanry, considering what I've heard of our various ministers and MPs lately.
