Its all about positioning isn't it?

When considering exactly what role the minority party has in our democracy you have to first look at their motives. As we have already learned, the primary goal of either party is to maintain or regain power. In this regard, the minority party, although not in power, has the ability to move in a different direction than the majority. They can stand against the issues the majority party favors as a means to strategically define their position in order to regain the majority in the future (the epitome of bipartisian politics). Examples of this could be seen in opposition to bail-outs or economic policies favored by the current majority party- the Democrats.

If the bail-outs prove to hyper-inflate the dollar and essentially make a bad situation worse, the Republicans, by opposing the ever increasing cash handouts, could strategically reinforce their position as the party that had it right all the while. What I'm getting at here is opposition voting. Its true that the Republicans can do little to stop the Democratic "juggernaut", but if the tide turns as they think it will, they will have strategically placed themselves in a position to regain power. After all, this is basically the exact strategy the Democrats used during the Bush years. They opposed many of his policies, most notably the Iraq war, and as a result, when public opinion turned, they regained power.

Please check out this article. It is older (pre-Obama) but I think it exemplifies my point clearly. Notice how Nancy Pelosi makes it quite clear that this is actually the brain child of the Bush administration. Yet most of the Republicans opposed it. Strange. Of course the fallout from the massive bailouts has yet to make its full economic impact, I suspect that in the future, congressional elections will again favor the Republicans and I don't think it will take 40 years this time.