{"id":579,"date":"2010-01-30T12:22:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-30T12:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2010\/01\/republican-tactics-vs-strategy.html"},"modified":"2010-01-30T12:22:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-30T12:22:00","slug":"republican-tactics-vs-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2010\/01\/republican-tactics-vs-strategy.html","title":{"rendered":"Republican tactics vs strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Larison – no admirer of liberalism or Obama or Democrats, mind you – has been running against the tide of late by arguing that the Republicans do not stand to gain as much in the mid term elections this year as conventional wisdom woud dictate. His analysis of Scott Brown’s victory<\/a> in Massachusetts in particular and GOP prospects in general<\/a> have been data-driven<\/a> instead of media-narrative<\/a> driven. And I don’t fundamentally disagree with his latest argument that Republicans are scoring tactical victories but lack a cohesive strategy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, I think he underestimates the way in which our political-establishment-media-establishment feedback loop structurally favors short-term tactics. In a sense, exploiting every possible tactical victory possible is<\/strong> a valid strategy. This is a cynical thing to say, I suppose, but given the utterly ridiculous expectations of the public<\/a> and Obama’s reluctance to dictate strategy on the left (essentially surrending political leadership to the Senate), I don’t really see any reason for optimism. And I’m not one who believes the public are fools<\/a>, either – I strongly believe that the public is a rational actor, but GIGO<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The burden of action for strategy is not on the GOP, but the Democrats, and despite a clear path<\/a> forward<\/a> the Democratic leadership has yet actively commit to it. Obama’s lack of specifics in the SOTU about how to move forward on health care<\/a> in particular was a massively missed opportunity to motivate the base<\/a>, which the GOP can passively exploit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daniel Larison – no admirer of liberalism or Obama or Democrats, mind you – has been running against the tide of late by arguing that the Republicans do not stand to gain as much in the mid term elections this year as conventional wisdom woud dictate. 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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}