The party of defeat

Republican Electoral Strategy 101

Foreign Policy
Step 1: Paint yourself as the party that fights and wins wars.
Step 2: Lose a war. But draw it out so that it takes years and years to lose.
Step 3: When the opposition party points out that you're losing the war, label them "the party of defeat" and insist you're winning.
Step 4: After you finally lose the war completely, blame the loss on the opposition's "failure of will".
Step 5: See Step 1.

Why this is genius: As long as the public buys the "failure of will" explanation, you can go on starting and losing wars indefinitely, and keep winning elections!

Social Policy
Step 1: Claim that gays are undermining America's institutions.
Step 2: After gays are forced into the closet, hire a bunch of gays.
Step 3: When your gay employees are finally outed in massive scandals, blame gays. Then blame the opposition for "condoning homosexuality."
Step 4: See Step 1.

Why this is genius: The more you force gays into the closet, the more gay politicians are forced to work for you instead of the other guys...and you have a scapegoat for all your scandals!

Economic Policy
Step 1: Claim that taxes should always be lower than they are.
Step 2: Engage in massive deficit spending (including massive pork for your campaign contributors).
Step 3: When the opposition is finally voted in to clean up the fiscal mess (by raising taxes and/or cutting spending), blame the opposition for taking money from the people.
Step 4: See Step 1.

Why this is genius: The less responsible you are, the better you look compared to the other guys!


Basically, all these strategies are variations on a classic theme: Plunder the nation and blame the opposition.

There's only one problem with strategies like these...When your country starts going into decline, the power pie starts to shrink, even as you grab a bigger and bigger percentage of it. So now we have an America in decline, and Republicans (who are clearly responsible for the decline) blaming the opposition and (mostly) getting away with it. Don't expect that dynamic to change on Nov. 7th.

This is what happens when a political party becomes loses all its sense of responsibility, and becomes more obsessed with maintaining power at home than with maintaining their country's strength in the world. It's a common problem in rich, powerful countries, where politicians are often more interested in carving up the domestic pie than expanding it.

Sadly, this has happened to the Republican party, and that party will not change - and America will continue to decline by losing wars, wasting energy in internal "culture wars," and wrecking its finances - until we toss the Republicans out on their ear.