Why Are Some Conservatives Rooting for the GOP to Lose the Senate?

Yes, many Republican politicians have behaved badly. But a Biden presidency with Democrats control of Congress could yield a torrent of progressive policies.

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In April 2008, as beleaguered Republicans trudged toward an ultimately doomed presidential election, P.J. O’Rourke took to the stage at Minneapolis’s Northop Auditorium to offer tepid support to fellow conservatives.

“Americans could end up with a Democrat as president and they will control the Congress,” O’Rourke told the crowd. “That scares me. … They could all get together and try to do things. Then, we’re screwed.”

“Republicans deserve to lose, but do we deserve the Democrats?” he asked.

At the time, there was a strong view among conservatives that punishment at the polls would correct the GOP’s ideological drift leftward. Traditional conservatives had seen eight years of George W. Bush expanding Medicare, approving government regulation of political speech, and pouring money into the federal government, leaving many feeling their Republican pParty was no better than the Democrats. 

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  1. H.Allen.Irish

    Why are some conservatives rooting for the Dems? You mean, like the Dispatch and its fans often seem to be doing? It's a mystery to me how you can claim to be a "conservative" while actively rooting for reparations, redistribution disguised as "equity," reimposition of Title IX abuses, de facto open borders, more Sotomayors on the bench, and the whole suite of Nancy Pelosi approved policy choices unless you're some faux "conservative" gifter like Bill Kristol, George Conway, or Jennifer Rubin. I'm not a Trump fan (nor a Biden fan), but I'm not going to blow my foot off with a shotgun because I have toenail fungus.

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  2. Joe1776

    This just shows how out of touch people can become when they are political insiders for too long. You don't throw the entire country under the bus because you don't like Trump's personality. Really calling him a nazi? Please enough with the lunacy. He keeps trying to give power back to the people and the states. That is not how dictators act.

    Just consider his behavior in response to covid. China and Putin ramped up control and tracking of people. Trump was the opposite. He was saying woah whoah don't start trampling the first amendment just because of this. Dems - well they were often all to happy to shut down competing institutions like churches.

    What large sectors of the economy will be socialized in the first 4 years of a Democrat President and Congress? At least Education and medical for sure maybe some housing. Then once people in those sectors are being paid by the government do you think they will ever vote for smaller government again?

    Socialism is only a one way ratchet. You can't easily undo it until there is the final and inevitable huge collapse and then you end up with oligarchies.

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    Devin H

    This seems to me a bit like the fear on the left upon the election of Donald Trump in 2016 that the Republicans would run rough-shod, and ultimately, in the two years they held all the power, they didn't really accomplish much. I don't think the Republicans deserve to hold the Senate based on some opposite but equal "fear". I worry that if they did retain it, they would only feel emboldened in their presidential defeat. That there would be some psychological backlash from the right to "stick it" to the Democrats, in a way that would just please the base. That it would just be an extended version of the Merrick Garland mess, but drawn out over at least two years with Mitch smiling smugly the whole time. He just doesn't deserve it to me.

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  4. Patrick E

    There's definitely a part of me that wants to see Trump get utterly shellacked in the 2020 election, if for no other reason than to watch the reaction from all the politicians and journalists who sacrificed their principles to jump on the Trump Train. But the idea of today's Democratic party controlling both houses of Congress AND the White House, even for just two years before the mid-terms, is terrifying.

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    Nikkimemmott

    Question. Is there a plausible map where McConnell loses but Republicans keep control of the Senate? As a left-leaning independent I don’t have a problem with Dem control of all three branches for 4 years (or more likely 2 years), but I can understand why the idea is not a comfortable one for right leaning people. That said, 2 - 4 more years of zero compromise, total obstruction with McConnell in charge (not saying Dems have not been as bad lately with control in the House, but McConnell has been a blocker since Obama) seems just as damaging to our political fabric. I think there has to be consequences for both - refusing to say emperor Trump has no clothes and treating the legislative branch as a path to Fox News rather than a branch of government with real work to do and sacrificing any progress at all in the name of throwing red meat to the base. If I thought Senate Republicans would choose someone more moderate - or at least someone more interested in doing the job of legislating vs scoring tv hits - I could get behind R control continuing in the Senate. I just cannot think, as the article suggests, that returning to McConnell and using the Senate as a means of obstruction is something to wish for. I think we have to start deescalating the rhetoric somewhere.

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  6. Jaybrown

    245 comments. Enough to make me skim the article and see that it was just click bait, designed to generate outraged comment from both camps. Not worth the trouble. Is The dispatch turning into NRO, or is the NRO commentariat turning it into NRO?

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  7. Christopher Jones

    I've been a Republican my entire life but I'm perfectly content with Senate Republicans who abdicated their Constitutional duty to be a check on a corrupt, immoral, and incompetent President lose their election.

    I'm perfectly fine that cowardly senators scared of a mean tweet and who refuse to uphold the rule of law lose their election.

    I want every senator who has stood by and done nothing while President our puts his own interests above the country's interest by allowing the Russians to pay terrorists to kill our soldiers without consequence to be defeated. Have we forgotten that this President was trying to build a massive development project in Russia while he was running for President and lied about it during the 2016 campaign? This one is personal - I have close relatives who have served in Afghanistan recently.

    I think every senator who has stood by while and praised the President while he bungles the Federal government's response to a pandemic that is killing tens of thousands of people while destroying our way of life and economy needs to never serve in an elected office again.

    I'm tired of Senators who tolerate the President's racism and blow their own dog whistles and want them out of office.

    I want the voters to send a message to GOP Senators that this won't be tolerated and the only way for that message to be sent through is for them to lose their majority so it doesn't happen again.

    I'll be happy to vote for a new generation of Republicans who didn't support this abortion of a Government we've had the last couple year - and Mitt..

    I'm perfectly fine having my taxes go up a little bit for a couple years to send that message. Some things are bigger than policy disputes. In the mean time, I'm willing to pay a little more in taxes to send that message.

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    Rajeev

    In my lifetime there's never been a debasing of a political institution like the Senate Republican conference under President Donald Trump. To be fair this started well before Trump during the early Obama years. But the rapid acceleration and loss of basic decency by an overwhelming majority of the Senate Republicans is unparalleled in my lifetime. At this point even if I were a Republican I wouldn't want any person I respected in the Senate seeing as how many have sold out. Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham, etc. the list goes on. And that doesn't include senators like Kelly Loeffler & Marsha Blackburn who at this point are basically internet trolls not even doing anything but unoriginal reflexive culture war tweeting and messaging.

    These are the same senators that all told us everything was all right (while in some cases selling their stocks) during February when they and the president did nothing. There are obviously decent men and women that have succumbed to Trump but that doesn't mean their blind faith should go unpunished.

    Under a Democratic narrow senate majority, I believe that Chuck Schumer would be a decent leader willing to work with others. The senators like Portman or Lankford who are obviously decent men that have tried to avoid defending or criticizing Trump will in my opinion help the Democrats pass legislation that helps our country but isn't too radical. I live in Colorado now and want Corey Gardner to lose even though he's been a decent senator. However, if the behavior of the Mitch McConnell senate is rewarded then it will happen again.

    The Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, and very sadly Cory Booker acted irrationally reflexively anti-Trump from the beginning knowing they wanted the far left vote to propel them to the Democratic nomination in 2020. It didn't work for any of them and while they made a lot of noise, they did not effect policy much at all. I imagine it will be the same with Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, etc. but I know there will be decent Republicans who will actually try to help govern by consensus in the minority instead of the pure oppressive plurality rule we have seen under the senate beholden to Trump and not to the people.

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    rlritt

    reasonable legislafion. In fact he just blocks every Drmocrats try to do. The worst however was refusing to put Merrick Garland's nomination before the senate. That will bite the Republicans in the ass one day.

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    Agustin Tornabene

    Hey I clicked on the "In fact, just days ago, House Democrats began pushing the Green New Deal as a remedy for George Floyd-style police misconduct." link and to say that's what the article is about is willfully misleading. Democrats mentioned George Floyd just to say that his death has brought increased importance to addressing the racially disparate impacts of climate change.

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      Emily

      What I wonder is how many people who cringe in terror of the GND have actually read it. I haven’t read it, so I’m not trying to be all superior, I just really wonder how much of the drama is based on factual analysis.

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