The calmer and more moderate Obama has been, the more extreme the GOP has become.
Over time, it has become apparent that this game has actually left the GOP exposed with a horrendous overreach, appealing to an ever narrowing electorate on an ever more extreme message. Obama has kept feeding them rope, with well timed little zingers and traps that they seem to keep falling for.
It gets harder to believe that Obama is not doing this deliberately. It seems to work so consistently, that I can't imagine it's an accident.
It's a bit like watching an Aikido master against a street thug:
The master is standing, completely still. His stance is relaxed, seemingly casual.
The thug is screaming bloody murder. He is red in the face, playing to the crowd. He throws punches in the air, shadow-boxing with his ego. The crowd is eating it up and screaming for him.
The master waits. He is breathing slowly through his nose, exhaling through his mouth, jaw relaxed, shoulders loose. His supporters are perplexed. They are looking at each other and whispering "What's wrong? Is he going to fight or is he just going to stand there and get beaten to a pulp?".
The thug charges, eyes wild. His huge frame is accelerating towards the master, mass times velocity, building up energy. A huge fist leads, with the entire mass of the thug behind it. He's clearly thrown punches before, he's really putting his shoulder into it.
The fist flies through the air, heading directly for the master's head. He's supporters cringe. He's going to get it in the face, it's going to be a whopper, he will surely not recover.
But his head is no longer there. When he moved, he actually glided forward towards the thug. It's not quite clear what happened next. The master seemed to follow the thug's motion, mirroring it, twisting with him, encouraging the thugs fist forward. The thug's entire mass follows.
Somehow the master is standing, right where he started. He didn't seem to do much more than a light pirouette, yet the thug has somehow ended up on the ground, dazed and slightly bewildered.
"You fucking coward!" he screams, turning around. He lunges again, this time aiming his head like a battering ram. Less than three seconds later he is lying on his back, dazed once again. This time though, there was a snapping sound. The thugs right arm seems to be dangling at a weird angle, and he can't seem to get it to lift up off the floor.
This isn't going well for the thug. The more pissed off he gets, the harder he fights, the harder he falls. It isn't a fair fight, or really a fight at all. The thug is beating himself up, his fury his greatest weakness, his mass and power his greatest enemy.
The aikido-for-politics message I have distilled is this: The Overton window cannot be dragged to one extreme without risking dropping off the edge of sanity and alienating people. Then, the Overton window snaps back.
[PS. Obama has taken a few punches, missed plenty of opportunities and disappointed many (me too) on civil liberties issues. But that doesn't make it any less delightful to watch the GOP's self-induced implosion during the primaries - take this diary with a healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek]