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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Failing, Ever Failing

Erick Erickson is eager for more primary challenges against Senate Republicans: Two Republicans in the Senate caused this fight that their colleagues would have surrendered on more quickly but for them. Imagine a Senate filled with more. The fixation on punishing the Senate Republicans that “surrendered” is revealing. It shows that Erickson still doesn’t grasp […]

Erick Erickson is eager for more primary challenges against Senate Republicans:

Two Republicans in the Senate caused this fight that their colleagues would have surrendered on more quickly but for them. Imagine a Senate filled with more.

The fixation on punishing the Senate Republicans that “surrendered” is revealing. It shows that Erickson still doesn’t grasp that lack of control of the Senate doomed any effort to force significant concessions from the administration, and it shows how oblivious he remains to the greater political dangers that the GOP just escaped. Having a larger number of uncompromising Republicans in the Senate probably wouldn’t have prevented yesterday’s deal, since nearly two-thirds of the Senate GOP voted for it anyway. That’s a lot of “charlatans” to defeat. Nonetheless, if a deal had been prevented thanks to Senate Republican opposition, Republicans would just as surely have “owned” the consequences of breaching the debt ceiling as they “owned” the shutdown. Those consequences would have been significantly worse for the country, and Republicans would have to start worrying about a net loss of seats in the Senate and the House. In case Erickson missed it, this would be the opposite of advancing. In other words, he wants to punish the Republicans that averted even greater disaster for the party than the failed strategy he urged them to follow.

As things stand now, diverting energy and resources into additional primary challenges isn’t going to make it more likely that Republicans will control the Senate in 2015 and could potentially cost the party a seat here or there it shouldn’t have lost. That all but guarantees that the party will be in the same place two years from now that it is today. Once again, Erickson is urging conservatives to do things that won’t actually advance their cause, and might end up hurting it. Perhaps conservatives should reassess who it is that has been conning and fleecing them.

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