Winning by Losing

Judging from the Sunday morning Talking Heads it would seem that the media cannot get enough of The Great and Terrible Oz.  Flipping through the stations The Loathsome One had rather monopolized television media.

I'm not so sure I know what to make of it but I do know what others have had to say about this curiously dangerous phenomena - including Bruce Bartlett.
 
An American historian, Bartlett served as a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and as a Treasury official under George H. W. Bush.  He had this to say:

The GOP is "just a coalition of cranks, and racists and bigots and religious kooks" that will lose big with The Great and Terrible Oz.  Seriously, after Sarah Palin they’ve so dumbed down the Party that The Great and Terrible Oz is actually a viable candidate.

As a longtime critic of the current brand of conservatism that has taken hold of the GOP he sees The Terrible Oz as the best shot of finally ending the Tea Party takeover of the Republican Party by an ensuring historic electoral defeat this November.

Sure, I know that someone reading this might take exception to this point of view.  But Bartlett goes on to explain his hypothesis as follows.

The GOP needs to lose this election - and lose BIG - something like what hit the party with Goldwater. Only then - Bartlett suggests - will the Republican Party regroup and start to reorganize itself in a rational and positive fashion investing real energy into creative, constructive action in lieu of obstructionism.

The Congressional GOP members of the house and senate have incessantly grumbled about Obama for wrong policies or not getting enough done while they, meanwhile, have enjoyed short work weeks, employed obstruction and demonizing rhetoric along with advancing virtually no important policy initiatives.

So here we are.  There’s a good possibility that the GOP will fail to win the White House again, lose the Senate and fracture the Party.  All of the foregoing can be accomplished with either The Great and Terrible Oz or Senator Carpet Bomb as the nominee for president.

Saving the party by losing an election. Is Bartlett on to something?  I think it's premature to make such a prediction at this point.  Nevertheless it is a novel theory.  Stay tuned…