(I'm a guest contributor on a RW blog. This is an article I posted yesterday.)They brought it upon themselves, you know.
The greatest danger to any political party in place for too long is an inevitable sense of invincibility and entitlement; and consequently the tendency, nay the compulsion, to over-reach.
Whether the Democrats win OR lose on November 7, the fact that this election is even in doubt is a testament to the short-sighted, make no apologies, take no prisoners, scorched earth policy of today's Gingrich/Rovian GOP.
The cynical view: If the GOP had made at least a showing of including Democrats in the decision-making process, they would have been able to share the responsibility of failure. As it is, they ran the show themselves and must bear the blame themselves. Much the same as the bite in the butt they got in the Jack Abramoff affair:When lobbyists are constrained to dealing only with Republicans, only Republicans will be caught up in the scandals.
The naive, yet idealistic view: If the GOP and our President had taken a truly collaborative posture with the Democrats after 9-11, how much better off would the country be? We'd have some consensus on the direction to take and the stategy to employ to eradicate terrorists. We'd still have the whole-hearted (and necessary) support of our allies. The various 'tools' that the President insists are required to keep us safe could have been debated and perhaps even accommodated through legislation instead of being rejected by the Supreme Court.
How much better off would the GOP itself be had they used a collaborative approach? They could have taken the credit for leading the military and security initiatives, and co-opted any Democratic argument that they had no input. A grateful country would have been happy to vote for them for many election cycles.
The GOP made their bed. Did the Dems learn anything from their years of passive observation from the back benches?
In the face of all prior experience, I'm hopeful.