In 2008, the Republicans lost not only the presidency, but the House and the Senate. The decimation was without equal in recent memory. The Democrats won, on paper, a veto proof majority in the Senate. But rather than crawling off the stage of political power, the Republicans licked their wounds and decided that they would start and maintain a political street fight with the Democrats, in general, and with Obama, specifically.
The Republicans, under Mitch McConnell, developed a singular strategy: to make President Obama a one term president. The Republicans lost the major political issue of the 2008-2009 political season, the passage of Obama Care, but developed a political ground force that would later drive them to success – the Tea Party. The Democrats won the Obama Care battle, but lost major amounts of political capital and political fighting spirit in doing it.
In 2010, with the credit going to the Tea Party, the once decimated Republicans took control of the House (winning sixty-three seats) and control of twenty-six state legislatures and twenty-nine state governorships which gave them control of state redistricting and the ability to make sure the Democrats’ agenda would be shut down in Washington. Through redistricting and gerrymandering, the Republicans have created a political lock on the House for the next decade.
In 2012, the Republicans lost the presidential election. The coalition that supported President Obama in 2008 came out in 2012 out of fear of the Republicans. The Republicans remained in firm control of the House and for two more years, the obstruction strategy of politics prevailed. The strategy was multifaceted. First, with uniform agreement, the Republicans advanced the narrative that nothing the federal government does is competent or useful. They fostered and maintained an anti-government mood within the electorate. Such a mood, by definition, hurts the party holding the presidency. Second, the Republicans exercised perfect political message discipline in asserting that they were not obstructionist and do nothings but rather they stood for principles that were not open to surrender for the appearance of cooperation. Third, they were relentless in projecting the narrative to their political base that Obama was at best incompetent and at worse, illegitimate and one step short of being criminal. Lastly, they made clear that the 2014 election was not about voting for Republicans, but it was about voting against Obama. The strategy worked.
The 2014 midterm elections leveled the Democrats. The Republicans picked up seven seats in the Senate and won twenty-three gubernatorial elections, including states like Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Illinois, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and South Carolina. The Obama one term strategist Mitch McConnell will take a new place among the top political leaders of the nation.
From 2008 to 2014, the strategy has been to oppose, resist and plan for the next election. The Republicans own Congress, but the crown jewel of politics is still in the hands of the opposition party. There is no reason the strategy will or should change. Politics is a game of power and winning. Governing is about policy and results. It’s the former that has borne fruit for the Republicans. The latter would only give the Democrats something to run against in 2016.
The political landscape has changed, but the politics of the landscape have not. Today, national politics is not about voting for something, it’s about voting against something. Fear, not hope, governs what people do at the poles. This was true in 2010, 2012 and now 2014. The next two years will be the same. For the Republicans, the political season of 2014-2016 will be about opposing Obama, House and Senate committee investigations, settling internal political power currents within the party, selecting a candidate to run in an open presidential contest and getting ready to defend twenty-four seats in the Senate.
Dr. Arthur Garrison is an assistant professor of criminal justice at Kutztown University. This piece is the work of Dr. Garrison and does not reflect the opinions of Kutztown University or its faculty, staff, students or alumni.