Your paragraph above perfectly illustrates my point. So W gets a 'legislative win'. Big deal! The result is further growth of the welfare state. I hardly consider it a 'win'. Who is the real 'winner' here, W or Ted? I can tell you who the losers are...
Whether a given political tradeoff is worth it is always debatable. But do you really deny that triangulation works? When one party takes away the issues of the other it makes it hard to whip up an electoral frenzy for the other side.
I thought my key phrase was the coming wave of Republican dominance.If that is really a possibility, I don't want W/Rove to jeopardize its coming to fruition.