The conventional wisdom and chattering class pundits seem to agree that Republicans are poised to win back one or both houses of Congress. And normally in politics a win is a win.
But, given what is transpiring in the GOP base and the empowerment of the batshit crazy wing of the party, I have to wonder whether the GOP will survive this election, win or lose.
What does a governing GOP majority look like in the age of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and the other extreme right wingers who use their perverted hateful rhetoric to incite and radicalize their base?
With Lisa Murkowski's primary defeat, we are witnessing now more than a trend -- it's an epidemic. In order to win, GOP candidates are running as hard right as they can to appeal to a base that is more disaffected and, I'll say it, delusional than I have ever seen.
The extreme is fast becoming the norm in elephant land -- Lincoln and Teddy are rolling in their graves.
This dynamic is already freezing so-called more responsible Republicans who have traditionally reached out to and worked with Democrats to advance public policy from the center. We've seen Sens. Graham, Snowe, Collins, McCain, and even Murkowski pull back on issues they initially signaled they might be willing to work on -- climate and immigration at the top of the list.
This is a very understandable response to what's happening in the Republican base. Honestly, just how do you govern if folks like these are your voters:
The problem of course is when you run so far right to win elections, how do you give yourself room to govern? How do you govern if in order to win power you have people like Rand Paul and Sharron Angle and Joe Miller and Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey in the Senate? These folks make Inhofe and Coburn and DeMint look moderate.
This isn't a pendulum swinging election. This is a pendulum breaking election.
And the thing that really scares me, and folks in the Kos community should have no illusions about this, is that if these freaks seize power, the only way they will be able keep their coalition together is to run non-stop investigations into the Obama administration. It'll be the Clinton Wars all over again, only this time the right wing media will be stronger and the rabid base will be more organized.
Still, longer term, where does all this go? How do Republicans walk back from this reign of radical right-wing terror? At some point, I have to think, even if there is no guarantee, that common sense and decency come back into vogue and Americans will once again want saner governance.
If the GOP, in order to placate their Jacobin fringe, remains frozen in their radical postures, the GOP brand, already very tarnished, could shatter and the Republican Party as we know it could come completely unglued.
This is all speculation, of course. But what isn't speculation is that Republicans are playing with a toxic brew this election season and there are serious risks, not just to the GOP, but to the entire country.