The Republicans Bet Everything, and Obama Won It All

The Republicans Bet Everything, and Obama Won It All
By Jonathan Chait

You remember the scene in Game Change, when John McCain’s adviser tells him that selecting Sarah Palin is “high risk, reward”? And McCain (or Ed Harris as McCain, or whatever) starts grinning uncontrollably? That is the approach the entire Republican Party has taken in almost every situation it has found itself since 2008. Republicans greeted Barack Obama’s presidency with a calculated wave of total opposition. They would not cut a deal on health care or on the federal budget, each time accepting the risk of total defeat rather than settling for half-measures, like giving Democrats some kind of token health care reform or small tax increase.

The gamble was that by denying Obama any support, they would render his presidency wholly partisan at best, and a dysfunctional failure at worst. They would increase their own chances of denying him a second term, and that their return to power would allow them to claim a full and absolute break with the past. They shoved all their chips onto tonight’s election. When the networks called it at 11:15 p.m., the totality of the right’s failure was clear. And because they bid up the stakes as high as they could, their loss was unusually devastating.

At the outset of summer, GQ’s Reid Cherlin spoke with Mitt Romney’s high command, which was overflowing with glee at its coming triumph — “not merely a 51–49 win but a run-the-table walloping that will send Obama into the history books as an undisputed calamity for America.” Hubristic as it sounds now, among conservatives it was no more optimistic a sentiment than predicting a sunrise. They had spent nearly the entirety of Obama’s presidency confidently predicting his demise. Obama was “crashing before our eyes,” his administration “entering its pitiful phase,” Americans turning against him in a “harbinger of doom.” In an eerie replay of the Carter administration, the right’s favorite historical comparison for Obama, the economy was dragging him down and, to make matters worse, he was “a very bad politician.” Romney designed his entire campaign as if this assessment was self-evident.

Obama’s imminent (or ongoing) collapse was to be the seminal event that shook loose his terrifying ascendant coalition. Rather than attempt to pry away his constituencies on the issues that drew them to Obama, Romney and Ryan harped on young voters' disillusionment. Obama had failed to secure comprehensive immigration reform. Young people faced bleak employment prospects. The party’s undisguised goal was to discourage the new voters who flocked to Obama in 2008 from voting at all, leaving the electorate older and, hence, whiter than it had been and probably ever would be again, at least in a presidential election. Those white voters would vote their pocketbooks, which is to say, overwhelmingly against Obama. And then henceforth Obama, like Carter, would be the symbol of failure and big government overreach, a political bogeyman for future Democratic candidates.

The great gamble failed. It failed for many reasons: The economy recovered just enough in 2012, Mitt Romney ran a mediocre campaign, Obama ran a strong one. Among the most important is a factor conservatives seem to have never reckoned with — their party has never recovered the public’s trust:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/11/re ... t-all.html

And, I doubt that they have learned anything...They'll continue to run the same failed game-plan... Obstruct, Deny... And hope that "sooner or later they might get a winner", and the public is too stupid to blame the obstructionists for their obstruction.

Did Obama win the House? Nope, he didn't win it all, at best, it is a continued Cold War. Basically he won re-election, and the Senate gained a couple Dem seats due to GOP foot in the mouth disease.

Politics will be very interesting the next couple months. Will they hammer out deals on sequestration and taxageddon? Or as I suspect, not do anything until the new Congress starts in January, and backdate the new tax rules.

We got a few new seats; we got rid of a few of the deadwood teabaggers... And we picked up how many seats in the Senate?

Yes...It WILL be interesting to see if Boehner and the 'Baggers continue to try to pull that sequestration thing and try to blame it on anyone else but themselves.

I wonder if the Dems might secretly want the sequestration to happen?

They'll get two things they want. Big defense cuts and a huge tax increase. And best of all, they can blame it all on the Republican's obstruction and not take responsibility for any negatives. Plus it cuts the deficit.

pineinthegrass wrote: I wonder if the Dems might secretly want the sequestration to happen?

They'll get two things they want. Big defense cuts and a huge tax increase. And best of all, they can blame it all on the Republican's obstruction and not take responsibility for any negatives. Plus it cuts the deficit.

Wouldn't it be "interesting" if the Republicans bet-the-farm and got hoisted on their own petard....

PITG,
That would be a good strategy for the Dems since the GOP has officially been declared dead. They won't have to worry about angry midterm voters.