I know this pains the Broderites to death, but there are two parties because people disagree on stuff. I know that’s horrible and terrible and the worst thing to ever happen in politics, but if we had a system that would allow it, we’d have 10 parties! Or 20! In fact, our elections would be huge messes like the one that just happened in Israel!
So you have two parties. One of them has had carte blanche to try its solutions for the country the past eight years, and thanks to an opposition party that never realized it was an opposition party, the Republican president and his congressional allies were able to do whatever the hell they wanted. As a result, we face several problems of crisis proportions. We had an election were both parties offered their solutions to these crises. The Republicans offered up the same stale “ideas” that created the problems we’re in today — tax cuts, deregulation, subjugation of our rights, and a more aggressive foreign policy. The people unambiguously rejected those Republicans ideas.
Now Republicans are out in the wilderness, but rather than treat them like pariahs and the fringe regional losers that they are, Obama insists that he wants their input. It might be a laudable ideal, but Republicans have decided that the way back to power is to offer contrasts with the ruling Democrats. That’s smart! Where they screw up is that their ideas are so terrible that no one wants anything to do with them. But who knows, at some point they might stumble onto something good.
But they’re not going to get back to power being Democratic lite, and they’re not going to get credit for any of Obama’s successes, and all the love kisses from Broder are irrelevant to them as soon as they have to deal with a Club for Growth-backed primary challenger.
This is political survival 101. Democrats have always had the better ideas, yet they prolonged their time in the Congressional minority by thinking that playing the “bipartisanship” card was going to pay any benefits.
Voters will look for the differences in the parties, and then they’ll vote for the ideas they like better. For the GOP, good luck on the latter, but they’ll never even have a chance if they don’t create the former.