Keep Your Friends Close, Keep Your GOP Closer

Obama continues to outmanuever, outthink, and outwit the GOP as his plans to pick off and convert GOP well-respected Republican moderates continues. After a fugly start with Judd Gregg, Obama has been on a roll. His latest convert? NY Republican Congressman John McHugh has been named Obama's Secretary of the Army.

Since taking office in January, Obama has made an effort to convert GOP moderates in nearly every region of the country, ranging from a former Midwestern congressman, Ray LaHood, who became transportation secretary, to Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who was recently named ambassador to China.

Obama also made a play for two of the four remaining Northeastern Republican senators — meeting with success in the case of party-switching Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter and near-success in the case of New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, who initially accepted the president’s appointment as head of the Commerce Department before backing out.

And with McHugh’s appointment, Obama has managed to cut New York’s ever-shrinking GOP House delegation by one-third. The state delegation now includes just two Republicans in its 29-member contingent — down from 10 as recently as 2004.

Between high-profile conversions from the Northeast to the Midwest to the Rocky Mountain West — not to mention Obama’s warm relations with the nation’s two most prominent moderate Republican governors, California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger and Florida’s Charlie Crist — it’s beginning to look like a strategy that isolates conservatives, reinforces the impression that the GOP is defined by the borders of the Deep South and all the while underscores Obama’s stated goal of working across party lines.

“It’s very smart politically on a lot of levels. First, it’s a demonstration that he’s keeping his promise to govern in a bipartisan way. Second, the fact is, every time you open up a seat in the House or Senate that an incumbent Republican holds, you give your party an opportunity to win one back. And some of those seats may come our way,” said Tad Devine, a veteran Democratic strategist. “It forces Republicans to defend their own territory and spend money on defense.”

“Boxing the Republicans into a South-dominated party is very good strategy, because the more you reduce the Republican Party, the more conservative and reactionary it will become, and thus less attractive to moderates,” said Tom Schaller, a University of Maryland-Baltimore County professor and the author of “Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South.” “The Midwest and the Northeast are the places where there are still remnants of old-line Rockefeller Republicans. And these are the places where the Democrats will build durable majorities.”

Obama is taking the long view, while the GOP is burning all its long-term plans in order to try to make short-term gains. In the end, Obama and the Democrats are looking to render the GOP as an obsolete, regional party rather than a vibrant national one.

It's a smart plan. I just wish the GOP wasn't so hell-bent on walking right into their own destruction.