Does Obama Want To Appear Weak?

Well, it's a theory:

The weaker Obama appears today, the more likely the Republican Party elects a tea party candidate like Bachmann or Perry, and the more likely they are to lose a general election to the president. By contrast, the stronger Obama seems today, the more likely the Republican Party trades in its zeal for strategy and nominates the most electable candidate, Mitt Romney, giving itself its best chance to take the White House.

I can see the strategic sense of this. But Obama only seems weak because he has been stymied by the GOP in the House, and because the severity of this recession was greater than we realized and the short term palliatives consequently mild. At some point, people will demand that something more be done to encourage employment and tackle the debt. If Obama proffers commonsensical ideas that at any other time would have commanded bipartisan support – and gets obstructed yet again – then he's off to Truman-land.

But on the whole, yes, the GOP is currently falling into a classic Obama trap.

I may be wrong but the GOP may be confirming my long-ago expectation that they'd swing to the far right after Obama's election, be given false confidence by a low turn-out mid-term, and then nominate someone essentially unelectable as a national figure.

But in this economy, all predictions are unreliable. The toxic cloud of high unemployment, low growth, and a vanishing middle class will make volatility and populism the norms. Which means that we may not have the full roster of Republican candidates yet.