TW: We are somewhat delusional and biased but when you are meant to be running a political party or any other entity it pays to manage your own biases downward. This piece weaves things like the Pundit Fallacy (i.e. "if only MY ideas were adopted, then my party would win), and the common voters tendency to vote competency over ideology to frame the challenge the Republicans face re-orienting their party.
It has been said before but I very much agree with those who say the worst thing W. Bush may have done for the Republicans was not the Iraq War but the Katrina recovery debacle. The Republicans always have branded the Dems as idealistic and ineffectual. Reagan came in after Carter and got things done for better or worse. W. Bush frittered the competency attribute away for the Republicans (their Congressional scandals exacerbated the problem).
W. Bush whatever your opinion of his substance never came across as someone who rigorously thought through issues, there was a flippancy to his management approach. Obama thus far is about 180 degrees different and reeks of rigor in attacking issues. He may not always be right but he appears to at least be thinking things through I think this matters.
Finally as far as the current Republicans go, the piece speaks of the old-guard's quandry. If they have not been "competent", then perhaps they should move on. Therefore, instead of pushing their competence (which the electorate desires), they are pushing ideology. It is a trap.
From Economist:
"POLITICAL commentators are prone to imagining that their own preferred policies and pet issues are also the keys to political success for the party crafty enough to adopt them. So common is this delusion that it's acquired a name: the Pundit's Fallacy. But as the ongoing civil war on the right reminds us, this particular form of cognitive bias can affect the grassroots as easily as the chattering classes. To the frustration of Republican reformers—and the bemusement of Democratic observers—there seems to be substantial disagreement among Republicans, the base no less than the leadership, about whether the party has a serious image problem requiring drastic measures, or whether, as the Black Knight might say, it's just a flesh wound!
...as ideologues sometimes forget, many voters simply don't conceive electoral politics as a contest between liberal and conservative philosophies of government, but primarily as a choice between individuals who may be personally competent or incompetent, trustworthy or corrupt. Among these voters, Mr Andres suggests, the problem is not (as moderates aver) that the party is seen as too extreme or (as conservatives insist) that Republicans need to more clearly distinguish themselves from Democrats, but that the current set of Republican standard bearers are seen as venal and inept. That's awkward for party leadership if true: An ideological problem can be fixed by moving to the right or the centre as needed; a personnel problem can only be solved by moving out. Which, one imagines, strengthens the incentive for them to conclude there's no problem.
...It became evident over the course of the last presidential campaign that much of the conservative base essentially believed that they were representative of the great mass of voters, albeit more politically engaged or informed. If they were aghast at Barack Obama's tenuous links to Bill Ayers, then the contest was won if only John McCain would press the attack. If they considered a programme that would push America closer to European-style welfare states little better than socialism, then voters merely needed the link to be made clear and they would recoil in horror. Yet these tactics did not prove particularly effective.
...For modern conservatives, the narrative of the liberal media seems to play much the same role. Some months ago, at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, your correspondent saw bow-tied wunderkind Tucker Carlson roundly booed for suggesting that if the right wished to wield greater media influence, they should stop focusing primarily on opinion and commentary, and learn something from the New York Times' commitment to rigorous original reporting. The audience was incredulous and aghast. They did not simply think, as Mr Carlson happily allowed, that the Times had a liberal editorial page, and that the presuppositions of its left-leaning reporters might skew coverage in subtle but collectively significant ways. They thought it was Pravda. The basic truth that folks who work in mainstream media tend to be left of center had been made to bear almost the entire weight of Republican defeats.
...greater mobility has greatly increased our propensity to cluster geographically with others who share our political views. This increases the cocoon effect for left as well as right, but liberals are more prone to be clustered in densely-populated urban areas where a fair amount of heterogeneity is evident even if the area is, on average, well to the left of the rest of the country. Second, media fragmentation combined with the narrative about the inauthenticity of the MSM makes it easier to believe that the fellow travelers encountered at conservative sites are the truly representative citizens, while the views aired on CNN reflect only an out-of-touch clique centred in New York, Los Angeles and Washington..."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/05/the_perils_of_unpopular_populi.cfm
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