Counter-Intuitive Republican Strategies

Here's something I can't wrap my brain around:
Progressives insist that Republicans will be rewarded in November if they prevent Democrats from giving them the policies they wanted.  So people would prefer a Republican agenda they didn't want over a Democratic agenda they couldn't get.

Huh?  This makes sense to someone?  Since when have obstructionists been rewarded for obstructing a popular agenda?  I understand why this would prevent Dems from being popular.  I just don't see why it's assumed that Republicans will reap any benefits from this.

And yeah, I get part of what they're saying.  Many people don't follow politics and might not understand how the Republicans are stopping the Democrats.  But if they want our agenda, why wouldn't they just put more Dems in Congress?  And whenever progressives talk about copying Bush's "No Holds Barred" approach to politics and I point out how completely loathed Bush and Republicans became from those strategies, they assure me that it was the Republican policies that are to blame, because people didn't want these policies.  So it's obvious that they don't just want any policies, but our policies.  So again, why would voters put Republicans back in charge if they prefer Democratic policies?

And these progressives might argue that people are too ignorant to know why Republicans are to blame for this problem, yet, is there any doubt that Republicans, in the midst of yet another hubris-stupor, will loudly advertise to everyone that they were the ones who stopped Obama?  Of course they will.  They'll make the same stupid mistake these progressives are making and imagine that they'll be rewarded for stopping an agenda that people wanted. 

And rather than making sensible alternatives to the Dem policies they stopped, they'll double-down on the stupid and insist that you need to elect them in order to stop Obama...who is still far more popular than any other politician in the country, Republican or Democrat.

All or Nothing

Huh?  How is that supposed to work?  Because I'm just not getting any of this.  There's no logic here.  This is contradictory drivel that only appears to be savvy politics by those who still believe, for reasons I can't comprehend, that Republicans are political geniuses and we're all just pawns in their game.  Because, yeah, I do think Republicans have somehow imagined that they could gain if they spend all their time throwing poop at Obama.  And who knows, polls show this all to still be a crapshoot in November.  Maybe Republicans will benefit from all this.

But that's the problem: Republicans haven't just double-downed on their anti-Obama strategy, but they've gone All-or-Nothing and burned any bridge they might need for a retreat.  They've bet EVERYTHING on stopping Obama, yet...polls aren't favoring them.  They've got less than nine months to make epic gains in both houses of Congress, yet there is no public tide favoring them.  They gave everything they've got, and might not win any new seats in the mid-terms.  For all the GOP's efforts, Dems aren't hugely popular, but they're still a little more popular than Republicans.

This isn't genius; it's completely stupid.  Sure, maybe people who want Democratic policies will be upset at Democrats for not giving to them and will replace them with Republicans who brag about stopping Democratic policies and don't offer anything comparable; or...maybe not.  And seeing as how many of these same progressives were assuring us that we'd lose the last two elections, and STILL act like we lost those elections, I recommend ignoring such people as much as possible. 

These people aren't intereted in victory.  They're intersted in ramming things down Republican throats and finally getting the payback they believe they're due.  I assert that without political opposition, these people wouldn't be political.