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On Tuesday, The New York Times ran a piece summarizing a new paper by the political scientists Christopher Warshaw, Lynn Vavreck, and Ryan Baxter-King on the impact local coronavirus deaths might have on Republican candidates. Reviewing survey data from the Democracy Fund and the University of California, Los Angeless Nationscape project, they concluded that a doubling of local coronavirus deaths over the last 60 days makes voters between .22-.45% less likely to support Republican House candidates and between .3-.9% less likely to support Republican Senate candidates. They found too that a county coronavirus death rate at sixteen times the national average would imply a reduction of only about 3 percentage points in the vote margin for a Republican Senate candidate. These numbers might concern vulnerable Republicans hoping to come out on the right side of thin margins in November, but they should hardly terrify most who will vote on coronavirus legislation.

One might object that even safe Republicans presumably want the party as a whole to keep the Senate and the White House and prevent Democrats from taking power. But the notion that most Republicans care about the partys fortunes as much or more than their own careers seems dubiousif this was the case, they probably wouldnt be backing ideas that might cross-pressure and endanger their vulnerable colleagues to begin with. And the most Republicans can realistically hope for are at least two more years of legislative stalemate anywayits extremely unlikely theyll be able to take back the House. In a Wednesday piece chastising moderate Republicans who plan on voting against the party in November, National Review editor Rich Lowry couldnt come up with a single policy item Republicans should look forward to enacting in another Trump term.

Its worth thinking through what purpose Republican power in Congress actually serves. Most liberal and progressive commentators take it as a given that the Republican Party lacks a constructive legislative agendatheres no real interest on the right in building new programs and institutions that would productively address Americas problems. But what many still dont realize is that the Republican Party has no real legislative agenda of any kind at allnot even a conservative one.

It shouldnt be forgotten that Republicans controlled Congress for two years under Trump. Their record of major legislative accomplishments, even from a clear-eyed conservative perspective, was fairly unimpressive. Sure, there was a massive tax cut that also eliminated Obamacares individual mandate and some financial deregulation. But Republicans also failed to fully repeal Obamacare, the central policy promise theyd made for years, and they flubbed the dismantling of SNAP in the 2018 farm bill as wellboth thanks partially to Senate moderates. Speculation that the party might finally go after Medicare and social security in the last few months before the midterms subsided once it became clear that Republican lawmakers were actually considering nothing more than another round of tax cuts. Those never passed, and many Republican candidates wound up staking their campaigns on panic over the migrant caravan and other culture war material.

If the conservative policy establishment was deeply disappointed by any of this, they showed few signs of it. The Heritage Foundation declared in early 2018 that the Trump administration, with the aid of the Republican Congress, had already embraced or accomplished 64 percent of their Mandate for Leadership platform. For reference, Ronald Reagan had evidently adopted only 49 percent of Heritages recommendations at the same point in his presidency. None of this is to say that Republicans in Congress didnt do real damagethey did. But Democrats and the left had feared the full imposition of Paul Ryans agenda. That didnt happen. Instead, Ryan himself gave up and left Congress. The Roosevelt Institutes Mike Konzcal summed the situation up well in a March 2018 blog post. At best, the Rights policy voices are all ideas and no consequences, he wrote. More likely, they form a kind of entertainment industry that only is consequential to the extent it channels business interests or mass resentment.

They arent more consequential because as much as most Republican lawmakers might support broadly unpopular legislation, they cant actually pass anything without the support of moderate Republicans in bluer parts of the country or the kinds of moderate and conservative Democrats who happily and eagerly signed onto welfare reform a generation ago. As is often said, both are now endangered speciesthanks to partisan sorting, most of those figures have either lost elections, retired, or put themselves in step with the rest of their parties. So, Republicans bent on deconstructing the welfare state have turned from real legislative battles to guerilla attacksthe White Houses hit on fair housing regulations, for instance, or the ongoing legal campaign to undermine Obamacare. These are fights that often play out in courts, which is why Senate Republicans, as little as theyve managed to accomplish legislatively, have been so doggedly determined to confirm a constellation of conservative justices to the federal bench, in addition to the two Supreme Court seats theyve filled. Mitch McConnell has pushed through over 200 judges since 2017; not a single circuit court vacancy remains. That work has alleviated some of the pressure Republicans might have to hold the Senate.

But much of that pressure is also obviated, again, by the design of the Senate itself. It should be well understood by now that even if Republicans lose the White House and the Senateand of course, neither victory is assuredthe Democrats ability to pass Joe Bidens agenda will be limited by the Senate filibuster. Although Biden has suggested in recent weeks that hes open to ditching it to overcome Republican obstruction, the decision is ultimately up to Democratic senators themselves, and pivotal moderates still oppose the move. The filibuster aside, the conservative structural advantage in the chamber will probably be in good shape for some time. Adding Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as states would help Democrats somewhat if the party were actually invested in making it happenanother very large ifbut analyst David Shor has estimated that a slight bias toward Republicans would remain in the Senate even if Democrats added six states, including the Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and Guam. If Biden attempts to circumvent Republicans through executive action as Obama did, Republicans can take solace in the fact that much of what he might try could be undone by another administration or, again, gummed up in court.

All told, if it seems like Republicans are acting as though the election doesnt matter, one should consider the many ways it actually doesnt for them. Moreover, its conceivable that many Republicans are quietly hoping for a loss at the top of the ticket. A Trump defeat might repair the GOPs standing with key constituencies Trump has driven away and will almost certainly encourage the political media to craft a redemption narrative for the party. Pundits and Fox News favorites on the Hill will attract attention and campaign donors drumming up rage at what Biden and Democrats in Congress are up to. Ambitious post-Trump populists and Trump critics whove been biding their time are both spoiling for a fight over the future of the party, which is to say a fight over the future of their respective careers. None of this should console Trump and the most embattled Republican candidates. But unless Democrats get serious about disempowering it for good, the Republican Party cant really lose.

Read more:
The 2020 Election Doesn't Really Matter to Republicans - The New Republic