Win By Losing?
Via Ed Kilgore, Ed Rogers from the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations makes the point that it’s basically never good to lose a Senator:
Notice to Republicans: Arlen Specter changing parties is good for the Democrats and President Obama and bad for us. If you think otherwise, put down the Ann Coulter book and go get some fresh air. There’s always a delusional element within the GOP that thinks if we lose badly enough the Democrats will gain so much power they will implement all their crazy plans, the people will revolt and purest Republicans will then be swept back into power. Even if this were true, it doesn’t take into account the damage done while our opponents are in control.
I do think it’s always worth considering an alternative. I think it’s very possible that Democrats could “gain so much power” that they implement at least some of their “crazy plans” and that the people, rather than revolting, will just turn their attention to other issues. For example, many Americans feels anxiety about their health insurance status. And the majority of these people vote for Democrats. But if Democrats deliver a health care reform plan that assuages those fears, those voters may start voting more on their hatred of abortion or love of torture and bring Republicans back into power.
You can think of Dwight Eisenhower succeeding as a politician not despite the New Deal, but in large part because the New Deal’s successes eventually built a country that no longer had a strong desire for progressive economic policy. Or how today’s tax cut jihad has trouble attracting votes in part because marginal tax rates are much lower than where they were before Reagan cut them—the issue just doesn’t matter as much to people as it used to.
44 Responses to “Win By Losing?”
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April 30th, 2009 at 9:28 am
You can think of Dwight Eisenhower succeeding as a politician not despite the New Deal, but in large part because the New Deal’s successes eventually built a country that no longer had a strong desire for progressive economic policy.
Or the fact that rolling back some New Deal programs, at the time, would have been political suicide(And Congress still having a Democratic majority for a fair amount of the time).
April 30th, 2009 at 9:33 am
as long as the country keeps ratcheting in the desired direction, we can afford that kind of loss every now and then.
April 30th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Let’s hear it for ratcheting in the right direction. If we can build a more efficient and more equitable system of healthcare funding, that will be the mother of all ratchets.
April 30th, 2009 at 9:41 am
A lot of Democrats were saying the same thing in 2000 and 2004: maybe it’s a good thing Gore and Kerry lost. No, it wasn’t a good thing. It was a bad thing. That good things can come of bad events doesn’t retroactively make the bad events good.
April 30th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Healthcare is impossible without trade-offs. Any comprehensive proposal will require a tax increase. Or a brutal expenditure cuts in other areas (defense might be best area) which seem unlikely. Ultimately it will be hard … I mean the choices.
If (as I think) passing healthcare is popular despite the costs, then the group that gets credited with delivering the same will be politically dominant for some time to come. Since the GOP is not participating in these socialist ventures, that only leaves the Dems. It is possible a GOP President might sneak in but the GOP has lost Congress for some time to come if they can’t get on the healthcare bandwagon.
April 30th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Much of Specter’s descision was based on opportunism. But unlike Senator Jeffords from vermont, he was not switching parties to get a commitee chairmanship. He was trying to simply survive !
That to me ,is the main story. Not that the democrats have 60 votes. After all, Specter does still have an independent streak. No, the problem for the republicans is that The Specter defection highlights the simple fact that it is very hard for a republican to get elected north of the
mason-dixon line .
In critisising him for oportunism , the republicans were admiting that anyone who wanted to win re-election in the north east was better off running as a democrat.
April 30th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Perhaps Ike had a political future because he was a war hero with a great smile. Had the GOP selected Taft and the country acceded your argument might have better legs.
April 30th, 2009 at 9:57 am
I don’t know Rum Raisin, I think it’s pretty likely that the GOP will just seize on those balances and compromises to attack the Democrats, all the while claiming that they personally were in favor of the popular parts of reform. “Nobody is suggesting it was a bad idea to expand coverage to millions of middle income people, but now doctors are SUFFERING,” etc…
I mean that’s been their line on most issues lately. “Nobody is suggesting” Iraq was a good idea, but now the “real question” is how to fix it (and the “real answer” is: keep troops there forever!). “Nobody is suggesting” the crazy imbalanced Bush budgets were smart policy, but the “real question” is how to balance future budgets (and the “real answer” is: cut all programs, everywhere, except the ones that benefit my political supporters). You won’t find many Repubs who openly support a Bush era policy, but you’ll find plenty who argue the failures arising out of those policies mean we have to implement a whole bunch of other longstanding conservative goals.
Being a political party whose whole modus operandi is to operate in bad faith in hopes of loping your way to 51% of the electorate in the next election has its perks.
April 30th, 2009 at 10:02 am
I’ve said this for a long time: when Democrats succeed they make people’s lives so much better they think they can afford to vote Republican.
It is the tragedy of the left that in victory, they must create their own enemy.
April 30th, 2009 at 10:07 am
the GOP has lost Congress for some time to come if they can’t get on the healthcare bandwagon.
Gotta agree on this. Social security was, and is, incredibly popular. So is Medicare. In the 64 year stretch from 1930-1994, there were only 10 years in which the Republicans held a majority in the Senate. In the House, they had a majority only four years.
If Republicans miss this, it’s going to be another long 60 years in the wilderness.
April 30th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Somebody please send this article to Ross “I wish Cheney would have run and lost in a landslide” Douthat!
April 30th, 2009 at 10:14 am
I’ll take that bargain every day and twice on Sunday. Neither Eisenhower nor Nixon made serious attempts to roll back FDR’s legacy; that effort didn’t even get off the ground until Reagan, and it has largely failed.
April 30th, 2009 at 10:14 am
We all know that nothing fails like success. That’s what Republicans are counting on. The problem is that they’re doing the counting with with an abacus. You’re not positioning yourself for any kind of future when your core constituency is bat-shit crazy, old, and downright mean.
It’s very likely Obama will not see much if any economic economic recovery on his watch. He may not have to. The contrast between the two brands so favors the Democrats that it will take significant overreach to alter this reality. As it stands, voters love Obama’s cool to the other side’s hot. That’s the real story here. Republicans keep thinking they’re going to beat Hollywood with Branson. But there aren’t enough nursing homes and absentee ballots to keep the proposition viable.
April 30th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Somebody please send this article to Ross “I wish Cheney would have run and lost in a landslide” Douthat!
I think you completely missed the point of that article, Al. The point was that Cheney is modern conservatism in its most pure form, and that all the Republican pundits saying they lost because they were Democrat-lite might have to reevaluate that if they put their principles right out in front and lost in a landslide. And they might discover that their principles and policies are just really unpopular and maybe they should work on that and not which candidate they put forth to espouse them.
April 30th, 2009 at 10:21 am
I don’t think it’s entirely out of the realm of possibility. After all, that’s how the Democrats got back into power.
April 30th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Eisenhower thought that it was political suicide to try to reverse the New Deal (his exact words about anti-New-Deal Republicans – i.e. the forerunners of modern movement conservatism – were “their number is negligible and they are stupid”). Today’s Republicans don’t. They’re already running against the New Deal and they’ll definitely run against the New New Deal, which means that if people actually *like* it, then the Republicans become the party that wants to take away your health care coverage just when you *finally* got it after years of pre-existing condition bullshit (or whatever beef you had with the status quo ante).
In other words, the people might turn their attention to other issues, but today’s Republicans will turn it right back by promising to dismantle everything Obama built. They need an Eisenhower, right enough – but they haven’t got one, and if they did, they’d excommunicate him for heresy.
April 30th, 2009 at 10:31 am
@Chris
This is correct. Eisenhower actually had a moderate and even progressive wing of the Republican Party to work with. In 1952 he prevailed in a convention battle against Taft – now he wouldn’t even make it through South Carolina.
April 30th, 2009 at 10:39 am
“You can think of Dwight Eisenhower succeeding as a politician not despite the New Deal, but in large part because the New Deal’s successes eventually built a country that no longer had a strong desire for progressive economic policy.”
Or, it could be that HE WON WORLD WAR II.
Mike
April 30th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Regarding Adam at comment 14
I agree with you MR ADAM .I have republican friends that actually claim, that if Palin had run at the top of the ticket ,she would have won .
Let’s be honest. If Obama had lost ,Clinton would have been on tv the next day saying “i told you so “. And she would have claimed that Obama should have been “tougher” .
Obama pretty much ignored his opponents and ran a positive campaign , and he talked to the American people like they were adults.If he had lost the election ,i garuntee you that nobody would try that again.
Losing CAN be benifecial . But only if someone realises why they lost, and draws the right conclusions from his/her’s loss.
Many here would disagree , but i think Macain’s loss was not just about ideology. It was about the republicans not acting serious.
When my liberal friends talk about how they hated Palin, and my conservative freinds talked about how much they loved her. None of them could actually name anything she stood for!
She could throw out right wing red meat and cheer up the republican base. But there was no substance to her or the rest of the republican party.
Sadly i feel this is still the case.As long as the republicans delude themselves over why they lost, they will be kept out of power. And deservedly so!!
April 30th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Or because Eisenhower was perceived, rightly, as someone who would not reduce New Deal initiatives. For instance, the top marginal income tax rate rose to 92% for 1952 and 1953, and remained at 91% for the remainder of Ike’s presidency.
Interestingly, the first significant drop was under LBJ, to 77%. I wonder whether he would have been able to afford both guns and butter if the rate had stayed at 91%….
April 30th, 2009 at 10:46 am
“Perhaps Ike had a political future because he was a war hero with a great smile. Had the GOP selected Taft and the country acceded your argument might have better legs.”
The point that we should make clear, however, is that it was Taft who was the long-time leader of the Republicans all throughout the early years in the wilderness (1930s through early 1950s). The long-term political instinct of the Republicans was to support Taft into his (and their) dead-end. Eisenhower was an aberation.
April 30th, 2009 at 10:58 am
I disagree somewhat. Specter’s problem wasn’t coming from the general election, it sprang from the primary challenge from the far-right of the GOP (which now adays is basically the entire party). Without a primary challenger, I don’t see why he wouldn’t have been able to position himself close enough to the center to be able to hold his seat. So I don’t think it’s that Republicans can’t get elected, I think the problem is that Republicans that are moderate enough to get elected in the north are being squeezed out by hardliners within the party.
April 30th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Many people seem to regard Eisenhower as a good geenral whho was nonetheless an amiable dunce,who had no political skills.
People should remember that during the war, Ike dealt not only with Patton. But also Montgomery ,Churchill and
DE Gaulle.
He also had Roosevelt as his boss.
He had to deal with THE most difficult personalities of the 20th century. And he managed to get them to work together. That takes tremendous skill.
People can laugh at Ike now, but he got us out of the Korean war ,and the buildup in Veitnam did not start until Kennedy and Johnson’s terms.
He was not perfect but he did a pretty good job of mantaining
peace and prosperity. THAT is why he got reelected . not the New Deal.
April 30th, 2009 at 11:15 am
I don’t think anybody laughs at Ike these days. His stock is pretty high among historians of the Presidency, with good reason.
April 30th, 2009 at 11:18 am
If the Democrats succeed in passing a good healthcare bill and some of their other “crazy” plans like a well structured cap and trade, then I can live with some voters reverting to the culture wars.
April 30th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Chris pretty much said everything I planned to say. So I will just note I think this comes down to a question of how long will it takes for there to not only be a wing of the Republican Party not based in blind opposition to Obama’s legacy, but for that wing to gain control of the party. And I would note it was a long time between Hoover and Ike, and it took a war hero to pull it off.
April 30th, 2009 at 11:59 am
I would disagree about it being a long time between Ike and Hoover — only 20 yrs and the memory of the Depression and the Repubs mismanagement of it was so profound with a majority of the population that it would have been politically suicidal for Ike in 52 or 56 to run on an anti-ND/pro-Hoover platform.
As for the comments generally about Ike, the historical revisionism has gone way too far, imo. True, he never was the doofus that some libs way back portrayed him based solely, it seems, on his peculiar speech pattern. But Ike hardly showed sharp intelligence or wisdom or foresight in some key areas — like dealing with the Soviets, for instance, on a new positive basis when Stalin died (only 7 wks into his presidency) after their new leader signaled clearly that they wanted to sit down and discuss a different approach to a modus vivendi.
PM Churchill saw this, and quickly urged Ike to attend a 3-part summit meeting with Malenkov, but Ike quickly responded back: No. Instead, stupidly and stubbornly, he and his admin continued the hawkish ways of the Cold War, while his Military Industrial Complex about which he famously complained grew ever stronger.
Oh, he also gave lousy advice both to Kennedy on Laos (send in the troops! — JFK decided to reach a negotiated peaceful settlement instead, wisely) and in 65 to LBJ on Nam (send in the troops!). The overly deferential Johnson was allegedly greatly influenced by Ike’s advice as he made the final decision early that yr to escalate.
Basically, Ike had the opportunity to move the country forward in positive directions both wrt the Cold War, and possibly ending it in his 8 yrs, and domestically in dealing with the anti-communist hysteria but in both instances he failed to seize the moment, taking instead the politically easier route of maintaining the status quo.
April 30th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
The present day Republican party is run by the heirs of those who thought Ike was a Communist.
April 30th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
No one who was is really anti abortion or loves torture voted for Obama so voters switching back to the Republican side once health care is taken of is a non-issue for the Democrats.
April 30th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
“The present day Republican party is run by the heirs of those who thought Ike was a Communist.”
The point of bringing up Taft, however, is that the core of the Republican Party (i.e., Taft, the central leader of the party) was always far to the right. Taft, for example, opposed the entire WWII war effort (including opposing it AFTER the war was over) because he thought FDR was using it to turn the USA into a communist country. I.E., it was more Eisenhower who was the distinct abnormality and Taft, Goldwater Reagan, Bush II, DeMint, etc who truly are in the mainstream of Republican Party.
April 30th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
This is such a great point. And its a good portion of why talk about “permanent majorities” on either side by these two parties is nonsense. At various points in the last 40 years racial resentments, crime, taxes, abortion, terrorism, and health care have all been issues that swung the broad middle of this country from left to right and vice versa.
To the extent this government is successful at easing the anxieties in some of these areas today, will actually in a perverse way provide an opening for the other side to win on other issues.
Don’t buy into any of this “one party forever” stuff. It’s bunk that even just recent history has made a mockery of.
April 30th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Interesting post. Beware success! It can bite you in the ass.
That’s why complete success is vital. Sweep the current Republican party into the dustbin of history, so the next time the public fucks up and elects a Republican president the Republican agenda is more benign.
Kind of like in ‘52, when the public opted for D.D. Eisenhower.
April 30th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Or how today’s tax cut jihad has trouble attracting votes in part because marginal tax rates are much lower than where they were before Reagan cut them—the issue just doesn’t matter as much to people as it used to.
I have to take exception to this choice of words. For as much heat as a screwball like Malkin or Coulter or Steve King gets for casual misuse of incendiary language, describing anti-taxers as on a “jihad” seems misplaced.
Oh, there are elements of the right with which you can certainly use that term without fear of exaggeration, mind you. It’s not that “jihad” is completely out of bounds. I just don’t think that Steve Forbes and Osama bin Laden have very much in common, nor do their ardent supporters.
April 30th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
I would disagree about it being a long time between Ike and Hoover — only 20 yrs and the memory of the Depression and the Repubs mismanagement of it was so profound with a majority of the population that it would have been politically suicidal for Ike in 52 or 56 to run on an anti-ND/pro-Hoover platform.
To clarify, I think 20 years is a long time for a party to be beating its head against the wall. And I very much agree with your assessment of the politics in 1952, but my point was that it took quite a while for someone who recognized that reality to gain sufficient control of the Republican Party.
So again, my question is how long will it take for another Ike–a Republican willing to recognize the new political realities–to gain control of the GOP? Is it possible we won’t actually see another Republican President get elected until 2028? Maybe so.
April 30th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
“So again, my question is how long will it take for another Ike–a Republican willing to recognize the new political realities–to gain control of the GOP?”
Ike didn’t gain control of the GOP. Ike was the GOP’s candidate for President, but he didn’t have anywhere near the power within the GOP as a party institution that you would routinely expect a President would have. (This is part of the reason why Nixon was Eisenhower’s Vice-President).
This is critical to realize: Eisenhower wasn’t the representative of the core base of the Republican party, and had to defeat the actual party leaders (esepcially Taft, of course) to gain the nomination. He was more of a “national unity” President, with substantial support from Democrats (indeed, the “Draft Eisenhower” movement began among Democrats). Indeed, the more marginal (or crazier) conservatives of his time literally thought Ike was a communist.
April 30th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
burritoboy,
Fair enough. I was more thinking of it in negative terms: those currently in control of the GOP are affirmatively trying to prevent an equivalent of Ike from becoming the GOP’s nominee for President (or even for Congress). So that control will have to be somehow broken or circumvented, but you are right to point out that doesn’t necessarily imply the resulting presidential nominee will be in control of the party.
April 30th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Eisenhower represented a retrenchment after the New Deal? Well, maybe, but take this short test.
Which program had the greatest long-term impact on improving the economic well-being of the average American: FDR’s New Deal policies, or Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System?
Note that the IHS was the largest public works program in history, with a total length of almost 47,000 miles and costing $425 billion (2006 dollars). Think what our country and our economy would be like without that network. Just think about moving imports from China through the ports of Long Beach/Los Angeles to New York on 1956 roads.
Or make this thought experiment. If the IHS didn’t exist today and we had our poor little patchwork system of pre-1956, what would be the chances of passing such a program now?
No disrespect to FDR, who did marvelous things, but I give my vote to Ike as the most progressive President in our history just for that one act alone.
April 30th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Sort of like the Republican argument that Republican presidents led the country for 20 of the 24 years prior to the end of the Cold War. No one talks about nuclear armageddon like they did in the 80’s because it is viewed (wrongly, IMHO) as being less of a threat. That created room for a lot of Cold Warrior-types to vote for Clinton. Carrying forward, Clinton’s de-fanging of welfare and its supposed abuses continued to lead more voters away from Republicans and towards Democrats over the last 10 years.
April 30th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
For those overly smug Dems posting here:
The main reason that Obama was able to seize this moment in time to ascend to the most powerful position in the world as a black man is precisely because of Karl Rove and his hugely failed policies.
If they ground had not been seeded by Fail, this radical success could not happened. It would be wise to remember that, but since we are Democrats it’s likely we’ll just focus on believing the Right when they call us pantywaists and playing right into their partisan bicker fests instead.
/sigh
April 30th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
“the Democrats will gain so much power they will implement all their crazy plans” —- that comment reminds me how amusing it is to see clips of LBJ’s speeches about Great Society programs and realizing that virtually no Democratic officeholder today could advocate similar goals — eliminating poverty, taking care of the elderly and disabled, etc. And LBJ was a mainstream, probably even the equivalent of a “Blue Dog” today, Democrat, not a wild liberal like Humphrey or RFK.
April 30th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
[...] here and here. From Yglesias: I think it’s very possible that Democrats could “gain so much power” [...]
April 30th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
You forget that the Dems courted Ike to run on their ticket as well.
April 30th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
I think you have it backwards. Ike was regarded as a deftly political general, which is why he was named commander in Europe – not because of his military prowess. That lead to him leading a no-nonsense and pragmatic presidency, handled with political deftness.
April 30th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
“hatred of abortion or love of torture”
Brilliant.
And this is written by a blogger considered by many to be a one of the leading lights of the Left. This is my punishment for clicking on a link to Yglesias, after reading the same style of non-reasoning from him several times before.
“hatred of abortion.”
Maybe those who oppose abortion would regard that as just a bit uncharitable. Most Americans are opposed to abortion in the 3rd trimester, unless to save the life of the mother, or to save her from serious physical health problems. Are they motivated by hate? Or are they motivated by an affinity with other human beings, who they don’t want to be killed (that affinity is sometimes called “goodwill” or “love”)? And if that’s the case, might that perhaps be the same motivation among those opposed to abortion before the 3rd trimester?
“love of torture”
There are serious, ethical people on both sides of debate over coercive interrogation, or torture. That’s true because there are competing claims here of a moral nature: The dignity of the individual subjected to the interrogation v. the duty to a government to protect its citizens. But it is a hallmark of the online lefty, and a confession of intellectual laziness, to blithely label opponents as loving torture. It’s uncharitable (and as a result, it’s false.)
I suppose there are miscreants of every ideological stripe, so no doubt there are some people out there who are animated by “hatred of abortion or love of torture.” But it’s deliberately stupid to apply that kind of characterization generally, to the majority of Americans who are to the right of the Sorosphere.