The reluctance of would-be Republican legislators to take the first step toward this kind of political action — to lay out some ideas for how our laws could better serve our country — makes every further step harder too, and so deforms the political arena. In the absence of genuine political speech (that is, speech directed to common action), we are left with empty partisan rhetoric. Such rhetoric can be heated and confrontational, but it cannot be productive of real legislative activity. For members of Congress, it is not a way to fight for victory; it is a way to lose.

If this were effective as an electoral formula and failed only as a mode of governance, maybe it could be excused as a way at least to stop the Democrats. But it is not great politics either. It is a strategy rooted in the notion that electoral victory can be achieved by maximizing the cohesion and energy of your devoted partisans. In a 50–50 electorate, that kind of approach can narrowly win elections about half the time. But a 50–50 electorate is in part a result and not just a premise of this sort of strategy. To win by more than just the barest of majorities, which is what it takes to govern in our republic, you have to not just maximize your team’s engagement but also appeal beyond your devoted partisans and take a serious bite out of the other party’s coalition. That is very hard to do by focusing only on the villainy of that coalition, or by cleverly refraining from giving voters who aren’t already on your side any reason to join it.

The polarized deadlock of our politics in this century has been fed by a vicious cycle: A strategy that takes that deadlock for granted has made it exceedingly difficult to break the deadlock. A politics that is about nothing but why the other side shouldn’t win has increasingly turned both parties into losers.