Playing To Lose
With all due respect to Charlie Cook, his latest column for National Journal is an interesting read, but even he acknowledges at the end that it is pure nonsense. It is not the way politics is played in this country.
But this brings us back to the original point. Should Republicans want to win? If Democrats win the presidency and hold onto the House and Senate, how long will it be before they self-destruct?
Democrats had majorities in the House and Senate when Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, and it took the party only two years to lose majorities in both. For Republicans, they already had control of the House and Senate when George W. Bush won in 2000. It took six years before they self-destructed, losing majorities in both chambers.
Lord Acton is famous for his line that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." It is debatable how much is corruption, how much is arrogance and overreaching, and how much is sloth or growing out of touch, but the result is the same. Whether it is Democrats or Republicans, conservatives or liberals, too much unchecked power is an inevitable problem.
A different way of approaching it is that every decade or two, a party has to destroy itself and be reborn. Like forests need fire to begin the regeneration process, from time to time, parties need the dead wood cleared out and space made for new growth to emerge. But to rise like a phoenix, you have to get down to ashes first.
I would argue that the Democrats didn't really reinvent themselves after their 1992 defeat. I'd say they more or less hunkered down and waited. But they still contested - hard - every election. Cook admits as much at the end of his column. It's actually more of a thought experiment than a real proposal. Still, he has a real point. The Republicans let their core values, forged under a truly unique, powerful leader, Ronald Reagan, bleed away while they were in power. The Democrats, of course, did the same after their once-in-a-lifetime leader, Franklin Roosevelt, passed from the scene.





