[Given the current polling], conservatives will really want to know how an Obama blowout and a seized-up Congress could also make for a best-case scenario. Simple: a narrow McCain win or loss will keep Republicans locked in a death struggle over the true meaning of conservatism and the identity of the party. So long as Congress doesn't flip completely and utterly into Democratic hands, a landslide for Obama will do conservatives much more good than harm. Without an all-powerful Democratic House and Senate behind him--or, more likely, in front of him, pulling him along -- a President Obama (even with an apparent mandate) would be high on inspiration and togetherness but low on power and ambition.Hemmed in by the realities of an overstretched and strained economy, intense yet delicate military commitments abroad, and the broad but vague longing among the American people for a simple change in political tone, Obama would function largely as a figurehead -- something conservatives wary of executive Bridezillas could appreciate. Liberals would get all the catharsis they wanted without really being able to effect much substantive change. The left would get the healing, the right would keep the hope. And as the Obama administration became consumed in the patient, laborious, and incremental task of leading a nation unified mostly in exasperation and exhaustion, conservatives would be able to clear their minds and clean their house -- their most important task of all.
I almost buy it in theory, but as a live possibility it seems increasingly remote. The problem, as I've argued before, is that it's very difficult to decouple a party's fortunes at the Presidential level from its fortunes at the Congressional level these days. And as a result, the looming Obama landslide seems almost certain to push Congress - and especially the Senate - well beyond anything that could be described as "gridlock," leaving the GOP perilously close to a rump position. In that scenario, my biggest fear is that the economic crisis ends up tying Obama's hands somewhat on issues of spending and taxation - and related fronts like cap-and-trade as well, perhaps - which in turn forces him to placate the feeling-its-oats Democratic base by expending political capital on other, less immediately-expensive liberal projects. Like, say, the immigration reform of La Raza's fondest dreams. Or the Freedom of Choice Act, and various other unpleasant items on the pro-choice wish list. Or a run of judicial appointees who make John Paul Stevens look like Clarence Thomas.
To some on the Right, I imagine this sort of prioritization would be treated as relatively good news. But as someone who would take Barack Obama's agenda on taxes over his agenda on certain other fronts any day of the week, it seems pretty close to a worst-case scenario to me.
