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Matt Miller has this idea that Republicans are acting wackier than usual.

Has anyone else noticed that seemingly well-adjusted Republicans have been driven insane by the passage of Obamacare? You can catch them muttering under their breath, whimpering on editorial pages and howling to the moon that this Democratic victory is the death knell for much that we cherish in American life.

Of the the three reasons Miller gives for the strange behavior, here’s the main one.

Republicans simply have not lost on an issue this big in decades. Media coverage features so many breathless political ups and downs that it’s easy to assume each party tastes victory and defeat in equal measure. But as a matter of ideology, these overheated fights take place between the 45-yard lines on a field that conservatives shrewdly tilted to their advantage several decades ago. That President Obama could move the debate to the 40-yard line and win is something the modern GOP has never experienced. Republicans mauled President Clinton when he tried to do the same; after 1994, Clinton’s “wins” were trumped-up and tiny. Republicans have so successfully framed the debate for so long that they don’t know what it feels like to be thoroughly beaten. Who wouldn’t feel disoriented and angry?

Good stuff and the football field analogy is perfect.  Washington politics takes place in an ever larger fishbowl where political victory is measured not in true accomplishments but by which team gets the better soundbite off on the evening news.  This blow by blow account of politics skews perspective to the point where the process takes precedent over substance.

With the passing of the health care bill, Dems have been able to move the ball down field and score a touchdown.  It wasn’t pretty, but it got done.  So yes, it does account for much of the panic emanating from Republicans these days.  They never saw it coming.

The signposts in the Republican universe have been abruptly altered. So don’t let yourself become desensitized to the sight of conservatives stumbling, lost in the night, the way you avert your eyes when passing poor homeless souls on the sidewalk. Suffering is subjective. There are people on the street who really think they are Jesus. There are Republicans in our midst who really think Obama’s version of Romneycare equals socialism. There but for the grace of God — and maybe a little less sloppy thinking — go we.

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