On January 29, 2009, after Obama took the White House and Democrats gained a 79-seat majority in the House, did Republicans crawl off to lick their wounds? Hell, no. They gathered gleefully at a Virginia resort to hammer home their new strategy: Obstruct, obstruct, obstruct!
And it worked, by golly.
The Republicans were pumped because they saw a path out of the political wilderness. They were convinced that even if Obama kept winning policy battles, they could win the broader messaging war simply by remaining unified and fighting him on everything. Their conference chairman, a then-obscure Indiana conservative named Mike Pence, underscored the point with a clip from Patton, showing the general rallying his troops for war against their Nazi enemy: “We’re going to kick the hell out of him all the time! We’re going to go through him like crap through a goose!”
