I guess if I were to offer sincere advice to conservative Republicans about how best to deal with President Obama’s second term it would be to recognize that they cannot succeed in radically downsizing the federal government while he is in office. To attempt to do so through endless fiscal cliffs and sequesters and artificial deadlines and extensions, is a recipe for failure. They won’t make anyone happy, not even their base. They won’t get what they want. And they will alienate almost everyone.
From the conservative point of view, perhaps the worst outcome of their intransigence will be that President Obama will wind up presiding over the biggest shift in public to private employment in the last century, mainly indirectly though layoffs in state and local government. He will emerge as a giant whose legacy covers so much political space on the ideological spectrum, that there is no room left for a majority-right party. By keeping Obama locked in where he is, they allow Obama to own the space they’re trying to claim as their own. It’s much like the credit Bill Clinton gets for balancing the budget.
Conservatives do better when they can point to overreach by the Democrats, as they did in 1994 and 2010. And, lest Republicans think they can repeat the 2000 election in 2016, remember that that election was influenced by a flawed ballot, a blow job, a robotic Democratic candidate, a right-wing Supreme Court, and obsolete demographics.
The Republicans should not just roll over, but they should really pick their battles more carefully. Make a deal on the budget, take your lumps on immigration, agree to some new gun regulations, and get to work on some policies that are actually popular.
