From a Life-Long Republican Contemplating the Election Results

Yesterday's events put me in mind (as I have been on other occasions) of Kipling's The Lesson; it was discussing England's very poor performance in the Boer War (though after England ultimately won that nasty conflict), but it applies to many other contexts as well. Its opening and closing stanzas seem especially apt:

Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should,
We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good.

Not on a single issue, or in one direction or twain,
But conclusively, comprehensively, and several times and again ….

It was our fault, and our very great fault—and now we must turn it to use.
We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.
So the more we work and the less we talk the better results we shall get—
We have had an Imperial lesson; it may make us an Empire yet!

Change what needs to be changed (the lesson is political, not Imperial), and it's good advice for many situations. The question is whether enough of us will take the advice—and, of course, whether the lesson we learn is the correct one.

Comments

[MickeyFitz]

However, the difficulty in learning a lesson from defeat is appropriately identifying the lesson to be learned.

[circleglider]

Indeed. Move forward, or turn backwards? Salvation rarely lies in the past.

[Jaypd]

I'm sorry but if you're MAGA you didn't make mistakes, you're just an awful human being with a stupid worldview.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Could you rephrase that in some semblance of native English?

[Rabbscuttle]

I'm sorry but if you're MAGA you didn't make mistakes, you're just an awful human being with a stupid worldview.

-Works fine in English. I might go with evil rather than stupid, but I suppose they both work.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Might be fine in DSA woke English, but that doesn't help.

[UserNameman]

Yeah, because this theory has worked amazingly well for the blue team for 20 years.

[Rossami]

Pot, meet Kettle.

Longer version - if you're the kind of person who simplisticlty thinks that all "MAGA" are "awful human being[s} with a stupid worldview", it's much more likely that you personally have just described yourself.

[Bubba Jones]

I agree. It's not necessary to be BOTH an awful person AND have a stupid worldview to be MAGA, but it helps.

[Murcushio]

I mean. I feel a little weird for even saying this, but in terms of purely hardheaded, practical, realpolitik terms, change may not be necessary.

I have been saying for at least fifteen years now that the Republican Party may have, either intentionally or by accident, "solved" American politics. The traditional approach to politics at the coalitional level has been "if we lose, especially if we lose a few times in a row, we should make some ideological, aesthetic, and strategic changes to our coalition to try and not lose anymore."

Only I don't think that's true. I think what is actually true is that it doesn't matter how badly you are thought of and how badly the populace reacts to your governance, nor how well your opponents are thought or or how badly the populace reacts to THEIR governance; thermostasis is your new god, now and forever. You get thrown out of power? Just wait. Just wait! In a relatively short period of time people will get sick of who you were replaced with, and you can be back in power.

Given this fact, that means that making substantive changes to your coalition in the pursuit of power is actually counter-productive. What you would want to do instead is adopt a strategy of "when in power, govern maximally. When out of power, sabotage EVERYTHING and try to make sure your opponents can't govern maximally themselves. Then you retake power and govern maximally again."

This will result in you losing some elections you could have won. But if you are someone who views the goal of holding power to be using that power to do good things, then you can take the stance of "it is better to be out of power for ten years and pass all these awesome things when we regain it, than it is to be only out of power for five years, but only pass these half-a-loaf ineffective compromises."

If you look at Republican governance since the Bush years, it becomes clear that this has been the playbook. I remain unsure if it is intentional or just something they lucked into, but that's what they've been running. Govern maximally. When you lose double down. When back in govern maximally again.

So if you're purely focused on maximizing utility, why wouldn't you keep doing this? There are limits to it, I imagine, but we've not even begun to explore them.

The Republican Party should change because its substantive beliefs are grotesque; immoral, unethical, unworkable, or some combination of all three. But in terms of political utility? Of electoral viability? I don't think it needs to change one bit. They got their asses handed to them in 2006 and 2008 as well. They were back in the saddle in 2010, and then they doubled down with Trump. Trump is very much a Minimum Viable Product when it comes to the Presidency, but it absolutely is viable, and if you believe in what he represents, why wouldn't you just stay the course?

[Brett Bellmore]

"You get thrown out of power? Just wait. Just wait! In a relatively short period of time people will get sick of who you were replaced with, and you can be back in power."

That assumes that the other guy doesn't use their relatively short period of time in power to change the rules and render the people getting sick of them irrelevant. Given all the talk about Court packing, I don't think that particular assumption is valid anymore. Even without Court packing, there are a lot of things Democrats could do with a legislative majority of this scale and the White house, that would completely change the political landscape. Legislatively naturalizing all illegal aliens. Making multiple territories into states. Setting out to destroy alternative power centers like independent media platforms such as X.

Adding a packed Court just supercharges that.

While Democrats' dreams of inevitable demographic victory proved premature, there are a number of factors that make relying on people to get sick of Democrats in power a REALLY bad idea.

1. The education system has been transformed into an indoctrination system.

2. The media environment has gotten even more one-sided.

3. Democratic openness to making big, irreversible, and profoundly norm breaking changes is reaching unprecedented levels.

So I'd say that business as usual for the GOP is a profoundly dangerous approach.

The first thing they need is to decide what they stand for, and actually mean it. That fight has been delayed too long, it needs to be settled.

Second, they need to start the long, long delayed creation of alternate educational and media institutions, to deprive the left of their current near monopoly.

And third, they need to have bugout bags and foreign assets, because, seriously, the Democrats are out for blood.

[Dolly’s Pardon (formerly Malika)]

Brett…C’mon. You’ve been preaching this for literally decades.

I mean, media environment? That’s so much less true than when you started this decades ago.

[Murcushio]

That assumes that the other guy doesn't use their relatively short period of time in power to change the rules and render the people getting sick of them irrelevant. Given all the talk about Court packing, I don't think that particular assumption is valid anymore.

How would court-packing make people getting sick of the party in power irrelevant? Please be specific. None of the "examples" you list would do this.

1. The education system has been transformed into an indoctrination system.

The education system has always been an indoctrination system. That's what it is for.

2. The media environment has gotten even more one-sided.

In favor of conservatives. This is to Democrats disadvantage rather than advantage.

The first thing they need is to decide what they stand for, and actually mean it.

The fact that you think the GOP doesn't know what it stands for is weird.

Second, they need to start the long, long delayed creation of alternate educational and media institutions, to deprive the left of their current near monopoly.

This is a delusion your part; neither of those monopolies exist

And third, they need to have bugout bags and foreign assets, because, seriously, the Democrats are out for blood.

Imagine being concerned that the perpetrators of vast, sweeping crimes might be held accountable for them, and advising people to have plans to avoid said accountability. The current Republican President is a traitorous rapist and a war criminal, but your advice is not "take responsibility for your actions, like men do" but "be prepared to flee justice."

As near as I can tell, you live in some kind of fantasy world where normie liberals are a threat to basic democratic good governance, rather than the actual world we live in, where the Republican Party has spent the past decade demonstrating the opposite.

[Bubba Jones]

MAGA built a coalition of stupid racists. Intentionally.

That seems like a lifetime gravy train if you aren't distracted by policy.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Pragmatic Republicans will learn, though it might have been nice if they had contemplated better before being so all-in on Trump, too.

The source is pretty fitting.

How, just how, can Republicans learn from this & promote a bad bunch of policies, but not do so in a way that is so incompetent, horrible, and unpopular for them not to accomplish their goal?

Maybe some can agree with Democrats that you need to investigate and check Trump? Nah. The election is about the economy, Iran, and so on. They can make a few noises, and then it's back to business as usual. Like after January 6th.