When conservatives are debating not how to hold the House and Senate, but why it would be a good thing for the Republican Party to lose both, you know you’ve entered a strange season.

And thus we have Mark Tapscott making a reasoned case for losing:

A far more likely outcome [than the Democrats gaining veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress] is Democrats in control but not quite able to
overcome a Bush veto that is aggressively threatened and mercilessly
delivered. Divided government would be the result. Let’s not forget
that during most of the 90s when the GOP had similarly slim majorities
that forced Bill Clinton to accept things like welfare reform, spending
increased at a dramatically lower rate than has been the case under
Bush and the GOP since 2001.

But there is another factor here
and that is the effect on the Moonbat elements of the Democrats of
being out of power for more than a decade but finding themselves
hamstrung by the continued presence of the hated Bush (finally!) using
his veto pen in the White House.

There would be lots of talk
about insanities like impeachment, congressional investigations,
repealing the Bush tax cuts and the like. But the lack of actual
results would drive the Moonbats into venegeful desperation and a
general revulsion among independent and conservative voters, with a
bloody and perhaps permanently crippling splintering of the Democrats
to follow.

It would in short be the perfect setup for a
stengthened conservative majority to return in Congress in 2008, most
likely with a White House occupant wise enough to recognize that the
"emerging Republican(i.e conservative) majority" had become a reality.

It’s not at all an unreasonable case, certainly not in the face of how united GOP government has functioned.

Yet, it does go straight to the defining question for conservatism today: Can it be a "governing philosophy," as some at the Weekly Standard might ask, with an affirmative agenda? Or is it best in opposition, reining in the excesses of liberals?

Would it be so bad if the answer were the latter?

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan takes note. Conservatives want to lose this election.