Republicans and the politics of No

My new column for the FT argues that the Republicans' political recovery is undeserved, and in the long run may even hurt them, because it is rewarding them for having nothing useful to say.

The Republicans' main achievement has been to contain their own internal conflicts. The trouble is, they have done this entirely by uniting against their self-wounding opponents rather than by forging an alternative program.

The problems that the Democrats are trying to address - the struggling economy, the approaching fiscal breakdown, the broken health care system, the transition to clean energy - are not imaginary. They require solutions. The Republicans have none, and as soon as they try to get some their unity will collapse.