The following is a common misunderstanding of Republican strategy:
The assumption the right wing appears to have made is that anyone with an iota of intelligence wouldn’t vote for them anyway.
Watching teabaggers at town hall meetings shouting that they want the government to keep its hands off their Medicare, it’s hard to disagree that being unglued seems to be a large part of right wing credentials.
The massive obstructionism that the right has taken as its ploy against any representation of the public interest in government has become so pervasive that it has included minority party delays of, thus far, 300 hours added to the Senate’s time to get its work done. Cloture votes drag floor sessions into long sessions of unneeded work, and of course run up the costs of staffing and general operations which is a total waste of public funds. Funds which are now supplied by Continuing Resolutions because the right wing has stopped the work necessary to pass appropriations.
Mindless obstruction serves no purpose, and has been employed even against bills the minority actually supports.
Wrong. Mindless obstruction does serve a purpose, as does the disruption of the townhall meetings by rightwing loons, though it’s not necessarily their purposes that are being served. It keeps the Obama administration on the defence, disrupts the smooth working of government and helps foster an atmosphere of crisis, all of which in turn will make it easier to win the midterm elections and then the presidential elections, while minimising the “damage” Obama can do. It’s exactly the same as what happened to the Clinto administration, an attempt to obstruct and delegitimise Obama’s presidency.
That’s the main difference between the Democrats and Republicans: the latter know that winning the elections is only the start the battle and act accordingly, hammering their opponents when in power and obstructing them when not. The Democrats on the other hand still sort of kinda believe in all that loyal opposition and bipartisanism crap. Furthermore, they’re usually content to let the Republicans hang themselves rather than actively oppose measures they often(partially) sympathise with anyway. The two parties aren’t that far apart from each other after all when you take an objective look at their policies and ideologies; even more so when you look at the actual people elected as Democrats. The Democrats accept this and largely only mount a symbolic opposition to keep their voters happy, while the Republicans were smart enough to realise that it doesn’t matter if you oppose legislation you’d normally support: what matters is opposing Democratic legislation. While calling it socialist, fascist and all other bad names of course.
This is another big difference between the two parties. The Republicans are willing to inflate differences beyond all proporties, were the first party to realise that you can do this and were not hindered by any lingering sense of fair play or reasonableness. They’ve permanently put the Democrats on the back foot, who forever have to explain that they’re not fascists|Islamists|commies and that they too are patriotic true blooded Americans and who are still not clever enough to realise that either way they lose, being seen as either traitors or as weak sisters easily bullied. What the Democratic Party needs to do, but is unlikely to, is to carve out a strong, broadly supported leftist position and attack the Republicans from that, not to be the Republicans-lite.
The final major difference is of course the absence of crazies on the Democratic side. The Republican Party has a hardcore of genuine loons, not just amongst their voters but on their benches, who do believe Obama is an illegal alien, the Clintons murdered Vince Foster and healthcare for the poor is equal to nazi deathcamps. On the Democratic side, even mentioning that Al Gore actually won the 2000 elections is enough to brand you a loony, despite the overwhelming evidence for it. In other words, nobody is scared by the Democratic base, they’re too reasonable.