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This is silly. A small majority is much harder to control than a big one. With a small majority your dozen most strong-headed members have a lot of leverage (as we've just seen), while with a big majority you can afford a few defections and it's no big deal. Plus the party leadership gets the credit and authority of having delivered a big majority.
except when you think you're going to get 240+ seats which gives you seats you can sacrifice to beat back the MAGA insurgency
what did the GOP do leading up to the 2022 midterm with great poll numbers? Well, they passed gun control and talked about illegal amnesty, both topics which will necessarily drive down turnout numbers
and I agree it was a stupid move, I called it out in the other place while it was happening a year ago, but it's the move they went with and a bunch of examples I can remember off the top of my head to support it (joe kent, john gibbs, jr majewski, david giglio, and more) and the fact it blew up in their faces is funny; blaming Gaetz/Trump candidates for losses when the Party picked the vast majority slate of candidates, attacked their own candidates, picked the strategy, talking points, and consultants, and conditioned money on accepting it, refused to support them in winnable races anyway while blowing silly amounts of money on Party candidates in losing racing, is simply silly
party leadership wants to maintain party leadership; empowering insurgency candidates doesn't preserve party leadership with easy examples of this being the Tea Party which took down Boehner
you think of the GOP leadership as people who want to get things done, but they don't, they're roaches who want to survive and maintain their power (even if it means the respectable loser opposition) and strong majorities mean they are expected to deliver on promises and their excuses are harder to believe (especially given they don't actually want to do most of the things they tell their voters they want to do)
believe it or not, 60 insurgent candidates in a 245 caucus is far worse for the people in party leadership than 10 in a slight majority, despite it looking like a big show circus when Leadership attempts a crunchdown after stringing them along for 7 months
it's far harder to make a stand with a small group of 8 people than with a larger group of people, despite you think they have individual power outsized their numbers, because it's easier to media blitz them, shame them, ostracize them, or buy them off
the way you think things work in politics simply isn't the way it works
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