The flip side to the coin is that the companies frequently use their regionals to open new routes to test the market. Those routes, if there is sufficient demand, soon become mainline routes. Vice versa, when there is insufficient demand to support a mainline aircraft, they frequently ship the route back to the regional... they will often do this and run the regional at a loss in order to bring in additional feed at mainline, and just as importantly, to deny full market share to the competition.

It's a double edged sword. The mainline companies need to be much more careful when negotiating around scope issues. IF, and I say again "IF" they do decide to give a scope concession (for whatever reason) they should insist upon language that restricts the scope concession to wholly owned regionals.
Likewise, the wholly owned regionals need to include scope clauses preventing them from being used as Republic currently is against Midwest.

The end result would be that places like Republic, Chataqua, Pinnacle would eventually be frozen out of work... since only the owned regionals would be able to get the new equipment.
Then... when mainline contracts come due, there would only be the mainline company, and the wholly owned regional to do battle together against the company.... and since the regional scope would prohibit them from flying the mainline stuff, there would be no whipsawing.

The immediate problem is the companies that stick somebody elses name in big letters on the plane, but are operated by a company that will fly in anybody's colors, for less money then the wholly owned companies. They are dragging everybody down with them.

The secondary problem is getting both mainline and wholly owned regionals to work together more. We don't have to be friends, we don't even have to like eachother.... but there is an old saying. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Our collective enemy, is the parent company, and they are counting on us to NOT work together.