Are Republicans throwing the election or are they really this stupid?

[SheilaT]

13. It is very, very important to understand

that neither candidates nor political parties deliberately set out to lose an election. Oh, I suppose that's happened once or twice in the entire history of elections, but trust me, as someone who has run for office and lost, you don't plan to lose, no matter how hopeless your particular race is.

And the common wisdom has been for many years now that the two parties are so evenly divided that (theoretically at least) any given presidential election can go either way. In reality, even though our elections are generally close once side or the other almost always has a sufficient lead as to be pretty certain of winning from some weeks or even months before the election.

There are exceptions, of course. The best one is that in 1991 no respectable Democrat was willing to put himself out there against George HW Bush in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. So a relatively unknown governor of a small southern state decided to take him on, and the rest is history.

Now, it would be true that pragmatists in the Republican party would be looking at the way this election year is shaping up and will start making plans for 2016. Discreetly. Pay attention to just how enthusiastically anyone who is remotely a contender for the '16 Republican nomination actually campaigns for the current ticket.

Another common wisdom is that the VP candidate on the losing side is automatically the front runner for the top spot four years down the road. That simply isn't true. Since 1960, one and only one losing VP candidate has gone on to win the presidency at a later date, and only one other losing VP candidate has gotten his party's nomination. Here are links to the lists of candidates for both parties:
Democrats http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Democratic_Party_presidential_tickets
Republicans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Republican_Party_presidential_tickets