How to avoid the mistakes of your father and find entirely new ways to screw-up
Learning from other people’s mistakes usually means one looks at the mistake, analyze what went wrong and then adjust behavior accordingly. Instead of doing this as a deliberate process, one could also choose to do the oppositve of the previous action and hope. It seems to me that this is what David Broder is describing. He discusses it as a radical departure from the recent past for Republicans. I see it as avenging Daddy without much thought as to the consequences.