Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: NRSC tries to stave off an infection of galloping Republicanitis

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' NRSC: Kyle Trygstad's lengthy profile of the NRSC's rebuilding efforts in the wake of their disastrous 2012 campaign really demonstrates just how beleaguered Senate Republicans have become. Notably, the piece is devoted to how the NRSC is supposedly reforming its press shop, once again showing that Republicans think they merely have a communications problem, not a message problem. But the lead quote says it all:

"The campaigns that jumped off message not only infected themselves, they infected all the rest of the campaigns," said Rob Collins, the new NRSC executive director, in his first extensive interview on the job. "So in this age of fractured but continuous, three-dimensional communication, we have to constantly plan for that and train for that and build for that."

So Republicanism is a disease, and the NRSC is the vaccine... only, not really. Collins, by saying he has to "plan for" and "train for" outbreaks of GOP coli, admits that the infection can't actually be cured, only contained. But even this analogy fails, because it's not as though the Republican Party host has been invaded by some kind of alien pathogen: Offensive idiocy is woven into the GOP's very DNA. It's a chronic condition, and it's going deliberately untreated. The NRSC's approach is the epidemiological equivalent of trying to quarantine arthritis patients.

But there was also another remark I loved as well:

"We don't have to be the center of the basketball team anymore," Collins said. "We can be the point guard. That's why we're making a massive investment in human beings."

Politics has been analogized to sports since time immemorial, but it helps if you actually get your analogy right. Collins seems to think that by "investing in human beings" who will go out and help specific Republican campaigns, the NRSC will no longer have to be "the center." But sheesh. Even casual basketball fans know that point guards run the offense, and devotees of the NBA are well aware that many now think it's well on its way to becoming a "point guard league," meaning that point guards are more important than ever. It's been a long time since Hakeem Olajuwon and Patrick Ewing dominated the highlight reels. I'm not surprised, though, to see that Republicans are still stuck in the past, whether it comes to the hardcourt or the campaign trail.