I was tuned into NPR (WAMU) on the commute this morning, listening to Cokie Roberts talk about what may or may not happen during the lame duck session.

Part of her point was that not just the results of the election, but the narrative, will have a great effect on how the lame duck session (which will be one of the most critical in recent memory) will play out.

If, she argued, Romney loses but the narrative is that Romney just ran a poor campaign and that he was just a fatally flawed candidate and if other things happen (GOP’ers hold the House and take the Senate, for example), nothing will change and the Republicans in Congress will simply continue to obstruct and be of as little use as they possibly can (and they can be of remarkably little use, as we have seen).

However, she continued, if that doesn’t happen, then the Republicans will have to reevaluate their positions and may work more closely with the President to actually accomplish something verging on the proactive in the lame duck.

Cokie, I must respectfully disagree.

The Republicans will continue to do what they’ve been doing (which is basically to sabotage the country and our economy). The only way it will play out differently is if Obama loses, in which case, they will only pass things that will expire a week after Romney is sworn in so that their new Gordon Gekko can start signing extreme right wing legislation with a clean slate, as it were.

And let’s not pretend that the narrative has not been preset. The GOP establishment is already setting the narrative to do just what Roberts described as being something that might happen. There’s no question about it – if Romney loses, the narrative is already in place to make sure that the results are defined as not being a repudiation of real Republican principles (which Romney will be defined as somehow not espousing), but rather as a failure to either hold or articulate those principles, i.e., that those principles would naturally have won out if Romney had really been a believer or if he hadn’t been so bad about explaining them.

Yes, if Romney loses, the narrative that he was a flawed candidate who, mainly because of the flaws, ran a flawed campaign, will actually be more or less true.

But what that will miss is that Romney’s flaws have so far led him into the trap of having to run a campaign of two visions.

The whole point was the Romney wanted to run as a bland, safe, generic ‘not that guy’ against Obama. He did not want to have to articulate anything. It is because this race is being framed as a choice between Democratic and Republican principles that Romney is losing; because this race has become a real choice between that ‘real’ Republican vision and the one being promulgated by President Obama.

P.S. – This post is dedicated to my Aunt Anna, who kindly asked me to write a little less about poetry and a little more about politics. I hope she enjoyed this post and the post immediately preceding it.