Positive Feedback Loops

Matthew Yglesias is passing along the news that the Senate Republicans are more concerned about trying to limit either a +9 or +10 net Democratic Party pick-up in the Senate than in attempting to get a +2 net GOP pick-up to restore their party to the majority.  I have severe doubts about the Democrats gaining nine or ten Senate seats while losing none as everything would have to go right in addition to some blind dumb luck in generically Republican leaning states.  We threaded that needle in 2006 winning six of the seven closely contested races as one race opened up on the unplanned and unforced Macaca gaffe.  But it is tough to do that in one cycle, much less two cycles. 

He has some quick analysis of where the GOP is coming from and how their prior decisions will be impacting their future prospects for a while.

You know things are bad when your political party won't even pretend it's possible that they'll pick up seats months ahead of an election. Back in January 2007, the congressional Republicans reached the conclusion that lockstep support for the wildly unpopular president and his wildly unpopular war was the right way to respond to the Democrat's big win in 2006. I think some folks are going to be standing around in January 2009 wondering why they thought that was a good idea.

I think this decision to hug the vest of President Bush was the first manifestation of a very nasty intermediate term positive feedback loop for Congressional Republicans.  I have been describing the Republican Party as locked in a dynamic that encourages bad decision making for short term and internal gains are more immediate and valuable than long term trends for a while now.

these retirements with expected strong challenges in the few remaining Northeast Republican seats, the non-Southern, non-movement conservative caucus in the 2009 Congress looks to be minuscule. The internal dynamics will produce leadership elections of hard liners and bomb throwers for a couple of cycles, marginalizing the party nationally and further increasing the institutional power of resource extraction, social and political reactionaries within their own caucus.

The 2006 election saw few non-scandal tainted hardline movement conservatives defeated. The election saw minimal Republican cross-over votes for Democrats.  Instead fewer Democrats than normal crossed over, Democratic turnout increased, and independents aligned heavily with the Democrats.  The districts which were very competitive and not scandal districts were disproportionally represented by less loyal Republicans and therefore less conservative Republicans than the seats which were not competitive.

The 2007/2008 Republican Caucus is composed of people who were elected or re-elected despite being closely aligned with President Bush's unpopularity.  President Bush, the economy, and Iraq did not destroy their careers.

Looking back at late 2006 and early 2007 two other things need to be considered.  The first was the external conditions that drove down GOP positives and increased their negatives were perceived to be transient.  For instance Rove argued that 'corruption' was the issue that lost the majority, and many people believed that Bush would pivot off of the Baker-Hamilton IGS report to a position of minimizing Iraq as a high salience issue.  The housing bubble had only started to deflate, and the incipient credit crisis was still mainly be covered on the blogs.  Further more there has long been a realistic threat of right wing primary challengers such as the race against Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD), the internal caucus dynamic is to engage in herding behavior to protect oneself against primary challengers first and foremost in the safe districts.

I think it was an assumed constant that many GOP moderates would face strong Democratic challengers no matter what policy actions took place.  The threat of a strong general election challenge is an analytical constant which means it can mostly be ignored. Any dissenters in marginal districts who went public with the dissent would be cut off from collective resources and lose most hopes of surviving while bulling forward as a herd would provide some resources and protection against anticipated strong Democratic challengers. 

I think this is a rational decision process of the interested actors, currently serving Republican House Reps but it is myopic as the short tem incentive to stay in one's seat while protecting oneself against the threat of a potential challenge from the right dominates the longer term objective of regaining the majority. This herding behavior is individuallistically rational, but collectively irrational if one assumes that the GOP objective would be to regain a majority in the near future.  If the objective is for most current GOP incumbents to remain GOP incumbents then this strategy is not that bad of an idea.  It is not a good idea as the decision process will winnow the GOP caucus to safer and safer, and therefore fewer and fewer seats, but as a short term strategy, it will insure that few incumbents face primaries, and most get re-elected in strong GOP districts.