Why a GOP victory in November could be a disaster for conservatives

If Republicans want to win back the presidency in 2012, they should hope to lose the midterm elections in November.

This is not some rant against the ideological impurity of the Republican Party.  On the contrary, for the GOP to forge the broad-based governing majority it needs to defeat the Democrats at the ballot box, it ought to appeal to moderates and independents.

But to triumph in the polls in two years time, the Republicans need to present a clear alternative to the Democrats.  That will be hard to accomplish if they enter into coalition with President Obama — which will inevitably happen if the GOP takes over the House and Senate in 2010.

Americans gasp at the thought that coalition governments could form in the United States.  It’s a European term, one that conjures up images of endless negotiating amongst weak political factions.

But the clear division of power between the White House and Congress makes coalition a regular feature of American politics.  The Republican Revolution in 1994 took place while a Democrat resided in the White House, and the GOP’s subsequent leadership of Congress was not enough to stop President Clinton from clinching re-election two years later.

Years earlier, President Reagan had to pass his conservative agenda through the teeth of Speaker Tip O’Neill’s Democratic House.  Indeed, one party has controlled both the White House and Congress for only 20 of the last 65 years.

So coalitions are emblematic of the American political system.

The problem for Republicans is that if they take control of one or both houses of Congress, they will serve as the junior partner in a coalition with President Obama.  And junior partners too often fail to come out of the shadow of the government of which they form a part.

Junior partners receive little credit when things go well and all of the approbation when things go badly.

In the nineties, Speaker Gingrich and the new Republican intake in Congress crafted the Welfare Reform Act, perhaps the single greatest piece of legislation passed since the end of the Reagan administration.  It was the cornerstone of the Contract with America.  And yet, despite the work of Gingrich and congressmen like Rick Santorum, it was President Clinton who signed the bill to much public fanfare.  Bubba got the credit and secured his second term.  Gingrich resigned the speakership within three years of the Welfare Reform Act’s passage.

In Europe, junior partners in coalition governments likewise struggle to answer the same intractable question: How can they forge an appealing identity with voters while working with political opponents in government?