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I know it isn't relevant for the sake of this discussion, but in Exorcist: The Beginning, the priest doesn't actually shoot anyone. The Nazi makes him choose the ones that the soldier will kill or else he will just wantonly shoot away.
What is relevant is the underlying message throughout the movie. That the priest did not, in fact, become party to the Nazis evil because of his compromise but suffered because he let that compromise strip him of his faith. Actually, it was his very rigid ideology (i.e., A good God wouldn't allow this kind of evil to exist) that caused him to lose faith and led to suffering. The idea that a 'presidential' individual doesn't compromise with the enemies is ludicrous. First it begs the question, how are these enemies and what defines them as such? Second, the idea that these enemies are completely & entirely wrong/at-fault is egocentric nonsense. There is always room to compromise, even with our enemies. Certainly there are individual issues that shouldn't be compromised, but people/nations are not simply issue-vessels and there is always room to compromise with them.
Either way, if the issue is the significance of Barak's vote on the Reauthorization Act then I say it is significant to the campaign, as run, but not to me. I don't want a president whose willing to cast a losing vote that won't matter one way or another for ethical reasons when he/she could have cast the opposite vote after bartering for even a slightly better bargain that serves his constituents (assumedly people with similar ethical thinking). So as things went down here, I find something I like about Barak. However, his campaign is being run on a very ideological message and that sort of compromise can be damning to such a message. So ironically something I find reassuring about Barak may end up hurting him with his actual base. Then again I suppose it's not all that ironic considering my well-known support of Clinton.
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"The courts that first rode the warhorse of virtual representation into battle on the res judicata front invested their steed with near-magical properties." ~27 F.3d 751
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