In many sports good strategy dictates that there are times when you hand the ball to your opponent an let them see what they can do with it.
There are a number of reasons to do this. You can do it when your defense is stronger than your offense. You can do it when their offense is inept. You can do it when you are so far ahead that anything else is just perceived as bad sportsmanship. Or you can throw one game to get a better seed in the tournament.
That the current neo-con Republican leadership would do this was suggested to me in November 2007 by someone who is smarter and better informed than I. And there are good arguments that this is what is happening right now.
While one might gleefully suggest that the Republicans are simply unraveling at the seams, their Machiavellian history argues against this. Certainly nominating the oldest candidate ever could just reflect the aging of their core constituency. That the Republican machine has turned his reality on end to present him as an honest American Hero suggests that they do want to make a good showing of it. Choosing a Vice-Presidential nominee who was unvetted and inexperienced could have been an honest mistake made in their enthusiasm to come up with someone who could match the integrity and intelligence of Barak Obama. Maybe they want it to be close on election day so that they can steal the election again and claim that Americans just would not elect a black man.
Or maybe the next four years look so dire that they want to be there in 2012, ready to bring their next generation to the rescue.
Snafubar suggested this in their diary
The Republicans want Obama to win, because they know that the war in Iraq (which will end badly under Obama's pull out or McCain's eternal commitment) will not get better in four years can be blamed on Obama -
The Republicans want Obama to win because they know that the economy may/may not come around, but if it does will not return to the (false) "prosperity" of Bush 43's term until long after 2012,
and therefore, in 2012, the Republicans can say,
"Well the Democrats had the presidency and the congress for four years and couldn't fix anything, so you might as well give everything back to Republicans in 2012."
But I do not think that they went far enough.
Iran will be trading oil in any currency except the dollar. Maybe we will even bomb them, outright or by proxy. We will certainly be involved in some form of action in central Asia.
Russia is resurgent and has a strong puppet master.
And it is not just that outside factors are conspiring to make the next administration look bad. Eight years of stealing cookies from the cookie jar have given the Republican neo-cons a bad image. And whatever your reason for giving up the ball, it is always stronger to point fingers and accuse the opposition than to be holding the ball in one hand while the other hand is in the cookie jar.