Conservatives were never going to get a crack at finally undoing popular programs like Social Security and Medicare (or as they think of them, "socialism" ) unless they forced the people they considered quislings within their own ranks out of power.
They set up a system that pushed peoples' hot buttons and encouraged them to single-issue vote on them. Compromise was scorned as capitulation, and backsliders were to be punished for their infidelity, long before the term "RINO" was coined. And down went the Rockefeller Republicans and their like.
Once done, they took what they learned and pointed it at the Democrats, ratcheted up the rhetoric year after year after year, and called it "playing hardball."
But the drawback is: When you paint the story that way, it's supposed to end with you bringing the bad guys to justice. They rot in jail, or better yet get hanged or fried. Blow up the Death Star. Drop the Ring into the fires of Mount Doom. The Enemy surrenders unconditionally and their symbols get blown up.
Your audience wants this:
But they never get it.
When you tell that story for decades, continually amping it up to keep the audience's blood at a rolling boil, you create an expectation that you can never really deliver on. You can justify decades of investigations and re-investigations and re-re-re-re-re-re-re-investigations, but that's not going turn up anything that will hold up in court. So you put yourself into the position of portraying the other side as unbearably evil and an active threat, and then don't do anything about it. The base still has their hot buttons pushed, still believes every word of it, they just start thinking you're ineffectual at best, or more likely are part of the problem.
Edit history
= new reply since forum marked as read
