Political math, and how to win by not quite winning

Amazingly, it’s only January, and some people are already speculating about whether the GOP could take back the House, and maybe even the Senate, in November. The main reason for this, of course, is Scott Brown’s stunning victory in Massachusetts running on a conservative platform. Writing for RealClearPolitics, Sean Trende has estimated that “the GOP currently has about a one-in-three chance of getting the 40 seats they need to take back the House,” and even a plausible if still very unlikely shot at retaking the Senate. His suggestion that the Republicans have a very good chance of gaining 6-7 Senate seats this fall isn’t idiosyncratic, either—liberal political/sabermetric analyst Nate Silver is saying something very similar. On balance, it would seem likely that when the dust settles in November, the Democrats will still control both houses of Congress, but barring a significant shift in their favor, their majority will probably be quite slim.

Most Republicans and Republican-leaning voters will probably be hoping for more; but from a purely cynical political point of view, they shouldn’t be. The best possible political outcome for the Republican Party would be for the Democrats to hold ~52 Senate seats (counting Joe Lieberman) and ~220 House seats. After all, what would the difference be between that and a situation in which Republicans had the exact same majorities? Probably not much in terms of legislation—but a world of difference in terms of who gets blamed for the gridlock.

In the current political climate, assuming things remain enough the same that we end up with a major Republican recovery and a closely-divided Congress, is that sort of razor-thin majority going to be able to produce significant legislation which President Obama would sign? No. But if the Republicans are in the majority, they will nevertheless be blamed by the White House and the Democratic Party as the obstructionists who are single-handedly preventing progress (conveniently forgetting the two years of Democratic supermajority that, so far, haven’t done much either); I would have to think that the chance to spend two solid years campaigning against Congress (which is unpopular no matter how you slice it) would dramatically improve the President’s chances at re-election in 2012, and spread his coattails a lot wider as well. If it’s a Democratic majority, though, then an unpopular and ineffectual Congress will only hurt his prospects, and those of the Democratic Party.

Now, as I said, this is a purely cynical analysis. Is what’s best for future Republican prospects also what’s best for the country? I really don’t know. I had hoped that the GOP would really internalize the lessons of its defeats in 2006 and 2008, enough to be humbled and chastened, before regaining power, and I really don’t see that as having happened; rather, the misplays, miscues, and mismanagement by the White House that prompted Mortimer Zuckerman to declare that the President “has done everything wrong” have handed them a shot at a political recovery that they have by no means earned. This is very worrisome to me.

Larry Kudlow is right, I think, that the GOP elite doesn’t even understand why voters are turning away from the administration and its policies—which suggests to me that if they do wind up back in the majority, they’re likely to wind up right back to the behaviors that got them wiped out in the first place. I believe, to be blunt, that that’s exactly what the Beltway GOP is hoping for. If I’m right about this, then that’s why elites on the Right continue to fight so hard against the possibility of Sarah Palin winning the 2012 nomination: she has a history of opposing exactly those sorts of behaviors in her own party, and of doing so quite successfully. If they can put an establishment type like Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani in the White House, though, I think they think they can go right back to business as usual. That might not be the worst possible outcome, but it would have to be up there.