Arrogance, Inc.- "We are right on every issue; the Democrats are wrong on every issue"

When arrogance borders on stupidity, you're not exactly a Republican mastermind

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

• George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

He - and if there is a God, I am convinced he is a he, because no woman could or would ever fuck things up this badly.

• George Carlin

Most politicians who lose an election look at the results with an eye toward what they can learn. What did I do wrong? How did I fail to connect with voters? How did my message fall flat? How could I have communicated my beliefs and my platform more effectively? How could I have been more persuasive? What demographic groups did I not perform well with and how can I reach them better?

Those are questions good politicians ask themselves to learn from their losses and become better communicators because electoral politics is all about communicating with voters. You won’t win many votes on Election Day if you can't connect with voters.

So you’d think that, with abortion opponents just getting their asses metaphorically handed to them, people like Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) would be thinking about how to reach voters more effectively. Well, you’d be wrong- WAY wrong- because Rep. Good believes that in the wake of substantial losses, Republicans must become even MORE extreme when it comes to abortion.

[On Election Day, V]oters in Ohio enshrined protection for reproductive rights in the state constitution, while voters in Virginia gave control of both legislate chambers to Democrats, thereby thwarting Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s plans to enact abortion restrictions in the state.

On Wednesday, Republican Rep. Bob Good of Virginia appeared on the “Victory News” program, where he declared that in the wake of these losses, Republicans must become even more uncompromising and extreme on the issue of abortion.

“We are right on every issue; the Democrats are wrong on every issue,” Good proclaimed. “That’s why they frantically cling to abortion as the only issue that they think may work for them, and in some cases it has demonstrated that it does.”

Wait just a damned minute- “We are right on every issue; the Democrats are wrong on every issue?” Seriously? That’s arrogance bordering on stupidity…but Rep. Good has never been renowned as one of the GOP’s most remarkably prescient political minds.

Then again, go ahead- keep on believing that Republicans are right on every issue and Democrats are wrong. Continue becoming even more extreme on abortion. Then we’ll see how many elections you win with that attitude.

It’s not going to bother me because every election Republicans lose is another that Democrats win. And I rather enjoy winning, especially when Republicans are too arrogant and stupid to read the tea leaves accurately.

“Part of the problem is that we surrender and we default to the media narrative, the left’s narrative that this is a loser for us,” he continued. “We need to be unflinchingly, unapologetically pro-life. I think when you have moderation, you have tepid, vanilla, benign statements on the issue of life—if you’re trying to talk about 15-week bans that only effect less than 10 percent of abortions—I think what that does is that demotivates our base. It’s not inspirational. It suppresses turnout in red states, and it leads to us losing elections.”

Yeah, that’s not even close to being “part of the problem,” but if you want to engage in self-delusion, knock yourself out. You’ll continue losing, Democrats will continue winning, and the GOP will become increasingly irrelevant.

The reason to become more moderate on abortion is because that’s where the American people are. Republicans can’t expect the mountain to come to them; they must go to the mountain because that’s where the votes are.

Rep. Good mistakenly assumes that the American people will come to believe that the GOP is God’s gift to them and that they will then, as a matter of course, vote Republican.

Um, someone should probably slap some sense into him. Or then again, don’t. He can keep losing.

And his argument regarding 15-week bans seems quite out of touch when you consider that Ohio voters just voted to enshrine abortion rites in the Buckeye State’s Constitution. Kansas voters not so long ago voted to legalize abortion. Voters, when given the opportunity, are rejecting Republican extremism.

Even in red states, abortion rights are popular, but American Taliban zealots like Rep. Good can’t be bothered to check in with reality to understand that their views don’t hold up.

“We need to be bold and aggressive and paint with bright red colors on this issue,” Good said.

Sorry, but I don’t think being “bold and aggressive” and painting “with bright red colors” will have the effect that Rep. Good believes it should. But, as mentioned earlier, he’s never been renowned as one of the GOP’s most incisive political analysts- quite the opposite, actually. It’s like looking at a raging wildfire and thinking the solution is to pour more gasoline on it.

In this case, painting “with bright red colors” will do little save for alienating moderate voters who might otherwise have considered voting Republican. Voters, whether on the Right or Left, tend to hate extremes, and those politicians who live on those extremes usually don’t have long and/or productive careers.

If you doubt me, refer to Marjorie Trailer Greene, Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, ad infinitum, ad nauseam….

Fire and brimstone doesn’t work in Christianity, and it doesn’t work in politics. The best work is still done somewhere in the middle, where compromise isn’t code for capitulation. The most influential politicians realize that sometimes, meeting somewhere in the middle is the best (and only) way to get things done.

Or you could stay on the road to Hell, insist that it be done your way or no way, and see how that works out for you. If you’re wondering why the Republicans in the House have accomplished precisely nothing so far this Congress, it’s because they equate compromise with capitulation. As long as that continues to be their driving philosophy, they’ll continue to obtain the same result.

Nothing good comes from becoming “even more uncompromising and extreme.” When you consider your point of view to be the one and only valid position, you discount the views of others who take their positions seriously, which is precisely why Republicans have failed to accomplish anything of substance in this Congress.

So, by all means, become even more extreme. Just as long as you have no plans to win any elections in the future, something that those of us on the Left will have no complaint with.

Go ahead and paint “with bright red colors”…and see how far that gets you. And I hope you’ll enjoy sitting on the sideline after 1.1.2025.

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