It seemed like I called the 2012 election outcome a year in advance

Looking back through my archives, I ran across this:

And so take a look at a hypothetical candidate that might sweep to power as a GOP nominee in 2012, with the Tea Party and Independents joining with Republicans for a landslide.  The winning platform is less centralization in Washington D.C, less government control, fewer government intrusion into things that government does poorly and has no business doing anyway.

The common denominator there?  All of those reduce the opportunity to feed the GOP party bureaucracy.  And so the bureaucracy fights any outsider who looks like he (or she) might upset the apple cart.  Campaigns of whispers from insiders to members of a biased media looking for dirt to prop up their Lightbringer and his party.  I don't for a second think that the paper thin harassment story against Herman Cain came from the Democrats.  It's a cold, dead certainty that it was the GOP machine that is trying to cut him down.

You see, Cain is very likely to be bad for business.  Well, bad for the GOP Bureaucracy's business, anyway.

And so they'd rather throw an election than give up their perks and opportunities for filthy lucre.  And what it's starting to look like is that they'll get someone safe (to them) like Romney, who will depress turnout from Tea Party and Independents, and so a GOP landslide will turn into four more years of Obama - and possibly even continued Democratic control of the Senate.

November 21, 2011.

Looking at the flailing that the Republican Party is doing right now in the budget negotiations with Obama (and the Copyright reform debacle) you can see this same dynamic play out.  Snouts in the trough.