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Have you heard this argument recently?--"We should be worried about how many seats the GOP wins this November! If we're not careful, we'll end up being barely in control of the both chambers of Congress and then we'll be stuck being responsible for all the bad things that the President and the Democrats manage to get passed! We're better off being just a couple of seats down; that way we can still keep bad legislation from being passed."
Yeah, that's a common one, isn't it? A tempting one, too: after the last four years, two of which featuring the GOP being blamed for everything even though we didn't actually control Congress, the idea of letting the Other Side have some karmic backlash for a change is darkly appealing. It's still a bad idea, for multiple reasons. Here are three that come immediately to mind:
1. We start winning on boring procedural matters. Many Republicans hate hearing this, because it's the first point that other, earnest Republicans make when the subject comes up. So let's skim past it very quickly: the Speaker of the House has a lot of control over legislation; being the Committee Chair is much better than being the Ranking Member; you need control of the Senate to determine which judges get even considered. Look up the House Rules Committee sometime . . . the usual. Guess what? It's still all true. All of these boring procedural matters matter. That's why the Democrats went to such trouble to win the House back--well, that and the lobbyist money.
2. We destroy their bench. This point doesn't get mentioned as much, but it's pretty important. We'll illustrate with an example: consider recent Indianan political history. Senator Evan Bayh (Democrat) decides not to run for re-election; so Rep. Brad Ellsworth (Democrat) decides to run for that Senate seat... where he's well on his way to losing to Dan Coats (Republican). Meanwhile, Democratic candidate Trent Van Haaften is likewise well on the way towards losing to Republican candidate Larry Buschon.
In other words, Bayh's resignation has hurt the careers of three Democrats, and promises to elevate the careers of two Republicans. Probably more: those Democrats are going to let staffers go, and the Republicans will need new staffs . . . do you see where this is going? By denying seats to the Other Side, we subtly degrade their future talent pool via the reduction of opportunities. Do that enough, and their party as a whole becomes less attractive to the skilled and ambitious. That's worth a good deal, right there--but it’s still not the most important point.
3. When it comes right down to it, this is not a game. This is the most pivotal point: conservatives have to decide whether they're serious about their beliefs, or not. If you think that you are right; that your way of looking at the world is, objectively speaking, the most sensible and legitimate way of doing so; that your policy positions must be implemented in order to keep our country and way of life safe and prosperous . . . then you have no business trying to game the system in order to avoid having to take responsibility. It is, in fact, a moral obligation for you to take as many seats as possible, in order to give yourself as strong a position as possible. If it's not strong enough . . . well. Failure to succeed is not a character flaw, but failure to act is.
To put that last point another way; conservatives and Republicans are not supposed to be involved in politics just to rack up a high score. We're supposed to be here to fix the country's problems. If you're not interested in that, perhaps you shouldn't be involved in politics at all.
