How the Survive and Advance Theory of Politics Broke the Republican Party
Governing is not the NCAA Tournament
We’re one month away from the NCAA Tournament, so if you’re wondering why I haven’t posted as much on this Substack, it’s because I cover Baylor basketball; the Bears are the country’s second best team. They haven’t lost, and have a decent chance to win the whole thing.
Maybe I’m trapped thinking too much about basketball, but when evaluating how the heck the Republican Party got to this place—where they’re all selling out to defend a losing president that tarnished many of them—a basketball analogy explains it.
In the NCAA Tournament, teams need to win six games in the 68 team field to win the national title. Style points are irrelevant. If you win your first game by fifty it doesn’t help you more than winning it by one. So when a good team barely escapes a contest, they can say, “Survive and advance.” Win one game—even ugly or closer than it should be—and you give yourself a chance to keep winning. A team just needs to stay in the tournament to have a chance to win the tournament.
Survive and advance makes sense for these elected Republicans. I’ve written before that the elected Republicans justify their existence by thinking the alternative to them is worse. Deep down many of these people appear to despise Trump and would like to return to the pre-Trump days. But if they say that publicly, it’s over. Jeff Flake found out how far you can speak out against MAGA, and Ted Cruz’s pathetic reversal from “vote your conscience” in 2016 exemplifies that you can’t go too far from MAGA and win in the GOP.
But survive and advance goes deeper than “the alternative is worse.” Survive and advance allows these people to think, “I can one day be the person to change things.” As long as the elected official keeps winning and advancing, they can one day rise in the ranks, and then they can change things for the better. President Rubio, President Cruz or, somehow even crazier, President Roger Marshall, can think, “One day I’ll be president, and I’ll fix this, but I just have to survive and advance through this era where I betray my principles.” They can continue to think, “I have to get re-elected; if not, I can never change things. Sure, they may not want me in 2024, but if I’m still relevant in 2040, then I can be president or a bigger national figure then.”
So Rubio, Cruz and Marshall can all pretend that a former president can’t be impeached. They can act like the process is the problem, not the product of Trump’s actions. And they can prepare to oppose everything Joe Biden proposes because their potential presidency is the most important outcome.
There’s an argument that this isn’t unique to the GOP. Maybe Democrats would be just as awful if their party were captured by a demagogue like the Republicans are now. Hopefully that awful possibility doesn’t come because the Republicans have shown that there’s no bottom when an entire party adopts the “survive and advance” mindset.
Kendall Kaut is an assistant district attorney, sports editor and election analyst. If you like the newsletter, please forward it and tell others to subscribe. You can follow Kendall on Twitter @kendallkaut
Other than not being historically and pathologically unfit to be POTUS, how are Cruz, Rubio, Cotton, Harley, ad nauseam, any different from Killer Donnie? And does anyone think they’d lead significantly differently than Donnie did? Seriously? (Hint: the answer’s obvious to those who’ve been paying attention or is familiar with the 1980s.)
Did I say unfit? The entire GOP has been proven to be unfit.