About a year from now President Obama will call Republican leaders into the Oval Office to make them an offer. He will point to the polls to show them of his continued popularity, he will assure them that no candidate they can put up stands a chance against him, and he will remind them that he has given into them on every issue. But, he says, even with his re-election he will not attain what he has always said motivates him - a united country.
As long as Republicans use him as a sniping target, he says, they will continue to divide not only the country but also their own constituents. As long as their extreme wing continues to gain power in the Republican Party by clinging to the notion that he is a Muslim from Kenya setting the country on the road to fascism and/or communism, moderation of the sort the country needs to survive will fade away. And they, the Republican leaders, know this, and they listen sympathetically because their positions are threatened by the extremists as well.
And so Obama tells them he will leave the Democratic Party to enter the 2012 Republican primaries to save the two-party system and save the country from extremism and division. Some of the Republican leaders in the room are shocked, but they realize they are dealing with a rational man who could win re-election easily, and they ask themselves - like any good politician - "What can I gain from this?"
The answers come quickly. They get someone beholden to them in the White House, someone who is the best friend Wall Street ever had. Their wealthy benefactors will be happy. Republicans will have their friends appointed to positions in the executive branch. All they have to do is distance themselves from the radical right and present themselves as moderates supporting a President-candidate who just wants to unite the country "as much as they do." They'd be doing it for the good of the country - at least that's what they would tell the media - and their position would be unassailable.
Fox News and talk radio would be floored, but they would adapt quickly. "Obama has come to his senses," they will say. "He's finally seen the light." They will be wrong, as usual, but they will declare victory anyway. Obama will be the same centrist who gave in to Republican demands almost before they made them, but Shawn, Rush, and the boys will quickly pounce on the liberals Obama left behind and rub their noses in it. (Think about the sports star you used to hate until he was traded to your team, and how quickly his vices turned to virtues.)
Finally, Mitch McConnell can contain himself no longer. "This is the craziest damned idea I have ever heard. You expect us to go out and support you as a Republican? What the hell are you going to do if we don't?"
"I'll beat your ass, and you'll get nothing," Obama says. "When I tell the voters how I'll give them a unified government, there will be a rush to the center and you'll get trampled in it. You'd better sign on to this to save your own skin. Frankly, I'm tired of this endless kabuki dance where you pretend to be outraged every time I adopt an idea you proposed. You guys aren't stupid. You can see that the silly ideas you run on aren't worth a damn. I'm coming to join you in the middle, and if you run to the right, you'll look like fools.
"Together we'll have sixty percent of the votes. If, on the other hand, you take your half and I take my half, that leaves forty percent for the Democrats - and they'll be glad to have a White House without me in it.
"So you really can't win if you don't support me. And I didn't bring you here to ask for your support. I'm telling you I'm entering the Republican primaries, and I'll have your support because you really don't have much choice unless you want to spent the next eight years on the outside looking in."
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Sure, it's a fantasy, but think of all the winners. Progressive Democrats get their party back. Republicans win without pandering to the extremists on the right. Obama gets four more years. And the country starts to deal rationally with its problems.