A good reason for Democrats to antagonize Republicans

By Richard K. Barry

Widely respected political analyst Stuart Rothenberg recently wrote about the civil war currently taking place within the GOP between moderates and radicals. For now the battlelines seem to be between Karl Rove's American Crossroads group and the Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation, Rush Limbaugh, etc. 

One the one hand the American Victory Project proposed by American Crossroads wants to fund and support moderate/pragmatic Republicans who have a better chance to win both nominations and general elections. The radical right organizations and pundits wants to continue proposing candidates who see things their way, arguing, no doubt, that there is nothing wrong with the message only in the way it has been presented. 

Names like Mourdock, Angle, Akin, O"Donnell, and Buck would suggest that Rove has a point, which is that a lack of appreciation for the role of pragmatism has hurt the GOP.

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One man's (mis)understanding of politics

By Richard K. Barry

Political prognosticator Stuart Rothenberg is a smart guy. I'm sure of that. But maybe he should take a step away from what he does for a living to reconsider his own understanding of politics. In a recent piece in Roll Call he argues that it might be good if we all took a break from politics:

Politics is fun, interesting and important, but at the end of the day, it is merely a way of picking the folks who have to make difficult decisions about public policy — including the fiscal cliff, tax reform, entitlements, the Middle East and immigration reform.

Those with some benefit of formal education in political science might recognize this view as the theory of democratic elitism. Politics is about electing decision makers. Once that job is done we are all encouraged to sit back while they do their job until the next time we have to decide on a potentially new set of decision makers, or perhaps choose to keep the same ones.

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