Should Conservatives Have Really Wanted to win this election?

This is an article about the bright side for conservatives of Obama winning. Part of it is that the party out of power can capitalize on all that is going wrong.


Did We Really Want To Win This Election?
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by Sean Oxendine
Your Friday question. I ask this because I've been contemplating: Had Bush lost in 2004, Iraq still would have been a disaster in 2006, and Hurricane Katrina still would have been a disaster on Kerry's watch and the economy still would have only stumbled along. But instead of a Republican President shouldering the blame, it would have been a Democrat.
In other words, we would probably have picked up 10-20 House seats in 2006, would have held most of our Senate seats except maybe Pennsylvania, and probably would have picked up Democratic Senate seats in New Jersey, Minnesota, and maybe even Washington and Nebraska. The credit crisis still would be going on today, and President Kerry would be going into this election with a horrendous approval rating. Mary Landrieu would be toast, Democratic Senate seats in Montana, Iowa, New Jersey and Michigan would probably be a couple notches closer than they are today, and we'd probably only have a handful of competitive seats of our own to worry about. In other words, we'd probably be heading toward a Republican President with a filibuster-proof Senate majority, instead of the opposite.
Now the counter-argument to all this -- and it is not a small one -- is that we would have lost Iraq, and Kerry would have appointed the Chief Justice and probably replaced Justice O'Connor, though control of the Senate would have limited what President Kerry could do. These are no small considerations. But the point is, you could make the argument that the Republicans would be better off in the long run if they had lost in 2004.
This time, the incoming President is likely to inherit an economy that stumbles along for several years. It may even be in a severe recession. Things overseas may get better, but it is unlikely. This will be blamed on Bush for a while (just as the 2001 recession was blamed by most Americans on Clinton in the beginning of Bush's term), but sooner or later, if it lingers, it will be blamed on the Democrats. And there's reason to suspect it will linger: proposals like raising the capital gains tax and renegotiating NAFTA -- when exports are the only thing carrying the economy along right now -- are economic insanity. And there will probably be no internet bubble to pull Obama's chestnuts out of the fire like Clinton's were pulled out.
In other words, 2010 would probably be a very good Republican year in the event of an Obama victory. Remember, in 1993-1994, Clinton did a few small things -- raised taxes on the rich marginally, tried to let gays into the military, and signed a gun ban. He lost 52 seats. Imagine what happens if Democrats go down a similar path, and go into an election with 1/4 of their caucus in districts Bush carried twice, with a softer economy than Clinton had in 1994. And quite frankly, the dirty little secret is that Obama doesn't have a fraction of Clinton's political sense and skill, and Joe Biden is a babbling buffoon, something that he (and the press) just won't be able to hide anymore once he is President.
2010, of course, is a critical election. Democrats will be defending open Governors seats in Arizona, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming. They will have incumbents in red or purple states up for re-election in Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio and Wisconsin, and will probably have unpopular incumbents or open seats in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Illinois. Wins in many of those seats, accompanied by even marginal statehouse gains, will mean that Republicans will control redistricting in some of the biggest states in the country (though we will probably lose California, where it would be hard to do too much more damage to Republicans), which would set Republicans up for controlling Congress for the better part of the next decade.
The best thing that happened to the Republican party was Jimmy Carter winning in 1976 -- had Ford won, he would have had to have dealt with many of the same problems, and probably would not have fared much better. It could be that losing in 2008 is a similarly good option. There's some times the Presidency isn't worth having.
UPDATE: Just to be clear on one thing; I think the Supreme Court is probably the best argument against this argument. To make matters worse, this is basically unknowable. People have been arguing that each election is the most important in a lifetime since at least 1996. Democrats have warned that a Republican President would replace Justice Stevens since at least then. Personally, I believe the man to be a vampire, who will live forever, but I digress. The bottom line is that it is true -- President Obama probably has a good shot at replacing Stevens and Ginsburg, and possibly Souter, in his first term. President McCain has a reasonable shot, though less than Obama. If Obama is re-elected -- and I think whoever wins has a very small chance of being re-elected -- he has a better chance at Breyer, Scalia, and Kennedy which is much worse. The bottom line is this: This is an unknown. It's all unknown, but the SCOTUS selections are more unknown than most things. As such, its hard to weigh in the analysis.
I just take the longer view. If we lose in '08 and Obama replaces Stevens, Ginsburg and Souter, but we win big in '10 and '12 and get whomever we want to replace Scalia, Kennedy, and Breyer, its a win. At that level, and at other levels.

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