Embracing the Loop

By Fester:

In August 2007, I wrote that I believed that the GOP would be engaged in an intermediate term positive feedback loop of stupidity.  This is one of my core analytical assumptions at the moment and one of the posts that I am particularly proud of:

Positive feedback loops usually suck as they produce excesses as previous actions encourage more of the same. In the short term, positive feedback loops produce significant disruptions and opportunities. Politically, being on the receiving side of a positive feedback loop that can resist mean reversion allows for a party, or a set of interests to gain rent-seeking positions.....

Another positive feedback loop looks like it is forming now as the Republican Party is becoming more conservative and institutionally more inward seeking....

Combine 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 miniscule. 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.

There are a lot of verifiable predictions made in that short post, and so far the feedback loop has been established, the non-Southern or non-movement conservative groupings have taken a beaten and now via Brendan Nyhan, it looks like the GOP is electing an even more hardline leadership in the House of Representatives.  The old leadership was slightly to the right of the 2007-2008 GOP caucus, but not by a whole lot.  The new leadership is to the far right of the 2007-2008 caucus but it may not be that much more of a deviation from the 2009 caucus as the GOP's centrists got creamed in 2008 following up their 2006 ass-kicking.