I’ll make it short and sweet… I think the Republicans are intentionally sabotaging themselves this year so that they won’t have to share the full blame for Iraq and the economy having imploded by the 2008 elections. I think they’re gaming for a razor-thin election… (with either side winning, just as long as it’s close) to get their electorate mobilized for 2008.
What say you? I admit I’m just an armchair commentator; just though I would bounce this off of some people.
I’d believe that if I thought they were clever enough, but no large group is that Machiavellian. Sure, some are going to think like that; the smarter ones. Some will convince themselves that Iraq and the economy and so forth will turn around any minute now ( especially since the alternative is to admit just how much of a failure they are ). Some will just be thinking of themselves, and will be trying to hang on to their seat, and to hell with the rest.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the goal of the inner Republican leadership; I just don’t think they could get the majority of the rest to cooperate.
I don’t buy that theory for a minute. The Republicans desperately want to stay in power. But when remaining in power is the only thing they stand for, then the revolution is over. . They will keep on trying to scare the people into keeping them in power, but the sell gets harder every day.
I can’t really disagree with the points made, but just a couple of observations:
Yes, they’re fixated on power. But I think they’d be willing to gamble 2 years of power on securing the presidency and potentially both houses of legislature again in 2008. I think they’re smart enough not to win a victory that could blow up in their faces in 2008.
True, no large organization could be that organized. But it doesn’t have to be all of them… if just a few key players decided to sabotage and everybody else were really trying to win, it would achieve the goal and still look really authentic.
Having said that, I think this latest scandal is made to order for a self-sabotage operation. Think about it… in the minds of the constituency, the Republicans don’t lose on ideas, they lose on a freak accident, skewered on a technicality by those hypocritical Democrats who said it’s OK for Clinton to get blowjobs and it’s OK for people to be gay but then they go and condemn a man for having sex with a boy! We’ll get 'em in 2008, for sure!
Maybe I’m just getting prone to conspiracies in my old age. It is interesting to note that in all my paranoia, I am unable to detect the Democrats having any plan at all. I don’t mean just a lack of conspiracy, I mean a lack of any strategy at all.
And this just in… North Korea just conducted their nuclear test.
I’m convinced more than ever that the Republicans will suffer heavy intentional losses this November. Setting aside for the moment whether they caused this mess, I am certain they don’t want any responsibility for dealing with it.
Absolutely. It’s been definitively proven that Republicans are evil, but all powerful, and so whatever happens must be their intent, and it must be for malicious reasons, too. Good call. Just make sure that tin foil doesn’t slide off, though-- otherwise the Republicans will be able to read your mind.
No way. The Republicans are working like dogs to stay in power. And, if the polls are accurate, failing.
They’re not some mystical super-powerful force. They’re just a bunch of tired old pols whose party is in the process of imploding from arrogance, incompetance, corruption and ideological exhaustion.
Yes, I know it sounds crazy to suggest that the Republicans have any godforsaken clue what they’re doing. It was just a kind of what-if scenario.
Make no mistake, I do not for a second discount the alternate possibility that they’re a bunch of idiots stepping on their own dicks with golf cleats and having no idea why they’re pissing in 3 directions. I was just bringing up the remote possibility that the Republicans actually know what they’re doing.
OK, let me apologize for being so dismissive. I think you’re wrong, but if you want to play “what if”, go ahead. I think the best explantion is that power corrupts and these guys are drunk with power.
Did you suggest that the Republicans are in cahoots with an insanely anti-American communist dictator that we’re technically still at war with? Uh huh.
Relinquishing power in the hopes that the other guys will screw up more is a stupid move. Even if Republicans do think that they’ve screwed the pooch in the past, they likely still believe that they’ll do better in the future. Why give the Democrats the oppurtunity to turn Iraq around?
No, I didn’t. I suggested that in their blissful ignorance they helped precipitate this crisis with their ham-handed foreign and military policy and will be perfectly happy to let the Democrats take the fall for the outcome.
I mean, going after WMD’s in Iraq, and then they turned out to be in North Korea… oopsie.
Nah. They know how short the electorate’s attention spans are. Every election is somewhere between irrelevant and forgotten by the next one. You shape them by having power. You don’t just give that up.
There have been op-ed columns, by Republicans, on the benefits of losing the election this year. These were from before the Foley scandal. I think that the writers were preemptively saying that an expected loss was for the best, but the reasons given were much like in the OP. I don’t believe it is intentional for a second, especially this latest screwup.
I don’t disagree but I think this explanation is in need of some perspective. It looks like the scandals are a tipping point but they are not the entire, or even most, of the story. If the GOP was truly popular then these scandals would not be bringing them down. But they are not because rather than altering their program to suit politics they have, to their credit, pursued their agenda despite the electoral cost. If instead of engaging in a risky-at-best armed reinvention of Iraq or tax cuts for the superwealthy they had taken up popular measures such as immigration reform and limiting outsourcing then they wouldn’t be in the boat they are now. Of course, that wouldn’t make them as popular with those who are bankrolling them.
Just my 2sense
The question is whether any of those scandals involve sex, or domestic matters.
Because from the generic GOP voter POV: the choice of conduct involving policy, administration and probity is best left to those in high office. So long as the feeling is one of there being godfearing churchgoers in charge, all’s well. That’s where the scandals will have to hit, to have any effect.
Because it can’t be done. Whether the Republicans as a whole are Machiavellian to throw the election to avoid the consequences is the question. I doubt it.
This is the flip side of the threads were people said how glad they were that Kerry lost, because then he’d take the blame when Iraq finally imploded.
If you don’t think politicians want to be in office, you don’t know politicians. No one wants to give up power, no one wants to give up committee chairs, no one wants to give up subpoena power, no one wants to give up being Speaker of the House. No one wants to give up the ability to gerrymander districts. No one wants to have to go home to North Carolina once they’ve tasted life in the corridors of power. If your party stays in power, then of course you can stay on as a lobbyist…but what good are your party connections going to do when your party is out of power and disgraced?
If you give up power to the opposition, on the theory that at least then you won’t take the blame for whatever bad things happen, when WOULD be a good time to govern? Why not give up power forever, then you’ll NEVER be blamed for anything.
Just my 2sense
Subpeona power and redistricting power are the real answers to your question. The Pubbies have very carefully redrawn their districts so that they are inassailable in many locales, or were before all this stuff hit the fan. If the Dems gain power, they’ll draw the districts a lot closer to their own hearts’ desires, resulting in more even races, and surely more races with Dems in an unassailable position.
And if Dems have subpoena power, they can use it to endlessly investigate all the shenanigans the Bush Admin. has gotten away with scot-free thanks their friendly Pubbie committee chairs. It could make it VERY hard for a Pubbie to win in '08.
That is why the Pubbies will not lose. No matter how the vote goes. Karl Rove is working night and day to make sure the ‘fix’ will be in wherever the races are at all close. Gonna be some surprising results, come election night.
Gotta agree with this one. I figure the odds are 50-50 that the November elections will see a lot of “surprising” results, where races that were polled as 70% Dem/30% Rep will all “miraculously” end up 49% Dem/51% Rep.
And the subsequent correlation of “surprising” results to the use of electronic voting machines will be ignored yet again…