Obama Has Republicans Right Where He Wants Them

COLD OPEN

Remember when the Republican party was doomed? It was 2008 and Barack Obama's election and the success of Democrats in controlling both houses of Congress meant that the GOP was on its way to becoming a regional rump party.


Republicans were doomed again in 2010 when Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle won nominations for Senate races—the GOP couldn't possibly survive being associated with the Tea party. Somehow, Republicans escaped that scrape. But they were doomed once more when Obama won reelection. And then again when they resisted the Democratic push for immigration reform. You may recall that way back in October the Republican party was consigned to oblivion when they lost the government shutdown/debt ceiling fight.
The argument is always the same: If Republicans don't acquiesce to the wishes of Democrats and liberals, then the party's "brand" risks permanent tarnish.

And yet, here we are, a year before the 2014 midterms and the polls for Democrats are brutal: disapproval of Obamacare is +20. The generic congressional ballot (which typically skews Democratic as an institutional matter) has the Dems nearly tied with Republicans, with their position in free fall. President Obama's job approval and personal approval ratings are at the low point of his tenure, and still falling.

As the president likes to say, let's be clear: Republicans didn't suddenly become brilliant political tacticians. Which only further highlights the silliness of projecting far over the political horizon based on the issue of the moment. Because if, for instance, the government shutdown really did beach the GOP, then they couldn't be in such a strong position just a few weeks later.

Politics isn't cyclical in any real sense: There are two parties, and they necessarily change positions of dominance from time to time, but not with any regularity. You can predict when the moon will be full—there's a lunar cycle. You never know when the side in power is going to implode.

But eventually most of them do. Now, every so often the side that's out of power comes up with some new(ish) ideas. Reagan in 1980, Clinton in 1992. Yet just as often, the party in power gacks it (1976, 2000, 2008). And since it's a binary system, someone has to win.

For all the progressive chest puffery of the last 5 years, it's not like there was some liberal renaissance of the mind in 2008 that caused Americans to elect Barack Obama. What happened was that Republicans got mired in two costly and unpopular wars, ran up an insane deficit, and then were at the wheel when the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression struck. (You can argue how much blame Republicans deserve for the crash —probably less than the Dems claim and more than the GOP admits. But in the immortal words of Will Munny, "deserve's got nothin' to do with it.")

And what did Democrats do in 2008? They stood there, reaped the rewards, and got crowned as geniuses for figuring out how to sell umbrellas to America in the midst of a torrential rainstorm.

Watching what's happened to Barack Obama over the last seven weeks as Obamacare has run a lance through his presidency is a wonderful reminder that choices, policies, and events all matter in politics. And not always in equal measure.

LOOKING BACK

"There is no doubt at this late date that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy and that he almost certainly acted alone. Nor should there be much doubt that his motives were linked to his Communist ideology, and in particular to his wish to protect the Castro regime in Cuba from the Kennedy administration's efforts to topple it. The evidence condemning Oswald is every bit as strong as that which condemned John Wilkes Booth in the assassination of Lincoln. Shortly after his arrest, the press began listing Oswald's extensive Communist associations and activities, including his defection to the Soviet Union in 1959, continuing membership in left-wing organizations after his return in 1962, establishment of a pro-Castro front group in New Orleans in 1963, and trip to Mexico City in September 1963 to visit the Cuban and Soviet embassies as part of an effort to travel to Cuba. It soon became known that the previous April, Oswald had taken a shot at General Edwin Walker, a spokesman for right-wing causes in Dallas. "Notwithstanding these known facts, liberal leaders sought to cast a different interpretation over the assassination. Earl Warren, chief justice of the United States, said on the evening of the assassination, 'A great and good president has suffered martyrdom as a result of the hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our nation by bigots.' This was a theme that Warren repeated two days later in a eulogy for President Kennedy given at the Capitol at the invitation of Mrs. Kennedy, who had made clear in personal remarks that she wanted her husband remembered as a martyr for civil rights, not a victim of the Cold War. Warren further implied that the climate of opinion in Dallas had contributed to the assassination, another popular theme (outside of Texas). On the same occasion, Senator Mike Mansfield, majority leader of the Senate, compared Kennedy to Jesus Christ and hoped that his death would bring to an end "the bigotry, the hatred, prejudice, and the arrogance which converged in that moment of horror to strike him down." —James Piereson, "Willful Misunderstanding," from our November 23, 2009, issue. Continue Reading...