The GOP has painted itself into a corner. A political party needs flexibility.
Culture-wars.
The only election-theme the GOP has left is culture-wars. Why? Because the Democrats stole everything else from right under their noses.
For too long, the GOP has lived on reputation alone. Their reputation of the party of economic success. Their reputation of being the party of national security. Their reputation of being the party of statesmanship.
But the GOP didn't value those topics. It took them for granted, opting to focus more and more on topics like immigration and abortion and jingoism. And this allowed the Democrats to campaign on these very topics.
And now the GOP cannot go back to campaigning on topics like economy and national-security.
Why?
Because these topics require finesse and attention to detail. No matter how much you disagree with someone politically, on topics like economy and national-security you will only disagree on details, because the sensible course of action does not allow for crass decisions. But the GOP has dedicated itself, redefined itself, to crass decisions. Anything to own the libs.
The GOP CANNOT go back to sensible politics, because that would force them to agree with the Democrats on the broad strokes and disagree with them on the details. But no amount of agreement with Democrats must ever be allowed!!! No matter how much the Republicans would want a policy, if the Democrats also like it, then that's automatically a deal-breaker.
For example: Look at Mitch McConnell's threats what the Republicans would do if the filibuster is gone and they have the majority. All the policies he listed were about owning the libs. There was no actual useful policy in there. There was nothing in there that could be reasoned for in a political debate.
For Republicans, the only good reason to like a policy is if the Democrats hate it.
And this is lethal for a political party. Let me give you two examples from german politics to illustrate why this is a political death-sentence:
* When Angela Merkel became Chancellor, she did so with a coalition-government between her conservatives and the social-democrats. With this coalition-government, she co-opted policies of the social-democrats, and come next election this put the social-democrats in the impossible position of being forced to argue against a Chancellor who had enacted social-democratic policies.
And the social-democrats have been losing voters ever since. Social-democratic policies are popular in Germany, but the social-democrats can no longer argue that they are the ones who make these policies happen.
* The state of Baden-Württemberg had been governed by the conservatives since the birth of the Federal Republic of Germany after WWII. Then, in 2010, due to hysteria in the wake of the Fukushima-catastrophe, the voters chose the Green party. Now, the Greens are the strongest party in the state and the conservatives the second-strongest. Socially, the Greens are very progressive and liberal, but their economic policies are not that different from what the conservatives want to do, because there is only so much you can sensibly do. This puts the conservatives in this state in the impossible position of having to run against someone who enacts basically conservative policies.
"I'm gonna do something that is fairly similar to what the incumbent has done, so elect me instead!"
Or take Obamacare. It is basically a republican idea, first implemented by Mitt Romney. But now that the Democrats have co-opted it, the Republicans will never again be able to propose a similar policy, because that would imply liking something the Democrats stand for.
= new reply since forum marked as read
