re: #42 HappyWarrior

Republican thought seems to be a lot of short, short gain and ignoring the long term. They’re really going to fuck their own future nominees with this stunt.

I’m not sure it’s that, exactly — Supreme Court worries are about the longest-term issue in American politics, except maybe redistricting.

It’s more that Republicans are very good at tactical decision-making and often very poor at the strategic side. Since the demise of the Rove neocon wizardry, the GOP has made very intelligent small-scale moves (or at least have done a good job of finding the least-bad option) but they make these decisions without an understanding of how they feed back into other parts of the whole. The SC thing is an excellent example, where they’re doing what is, in a vacuum a not-terrible job of holding off evil liberal court decisions. Thing is, they are doing that ignorant of what the presidential race is shaping up to be, and without an understanding they might be throwing away the Senate in the process.