The bears-and-sneakers theory of democracy

Dave Weigel has a good piece looking at how the conservative reformers who predicted a long wilderness for Republicans unless they changed their core message in this or that direction are reacting to the party's 2010 resurgence. "It now appears that the GOP is about to win without tapping into any of that stuff. The conservative movement's smart set, the people who liberals considered serious critics who could remake the right, really had nothing to do with the Republican Party's great comeback."

This happens a lot, of course. Liberals will remember the post-2004 meltdown in Democratic circles. The party had to move right on national security, on economics, on "family values." You couldn't be the party of less war and more tolerance and win the heartland. Four years later, Indiana went for an antiwar, African American liberal with the middle name "Hussein." In a two-party system, you don't need people to like you to win. You just need them to like the other guys less. Think of it as the bears-and-sneakers theory of democracy.

Which isn't to say that the conservative reformers were wrong. At the end of the day, politics is about more than winning elections. The Republican Party remains in intellectual tatters. Its main two policy ideas -- extending the Bush tax cuts and repealing health-care reform -- will make its main policy concern -- the debt -- much, much worse. It has no answer for our economic moment, for inequality, for the health-care system (Mitt Romney used to have one, but then Democrats took it), for the deficit. You don't need good ideas to win. But you do need them to govern.

Photo credit: M. Spencer Green/AP.

