Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Today GOP Elite Freaks. In November...

Hey, GOP establishment, I feel your pain. All the nice plans you made to get to 51 in the Senate look like they are compromised by the primary victory of Christine O'Donnell.

And I agree, she seems like a piece of work. Reminds me of another chap, name of Bill Clinton. A little bit of trouble keeping the story straight.

Glenn Beck had the mot du jour. Today, the Republican establishment is freaking, he said on his radio show. But that is just the beginning. Wait till the MSM starts freaking. Wait till the Democrat establishment starts freaking.

Naturally, establishment Republicans are worried that the defeat of RINO Republicans means that Democrats will elect people in Republican districts and the result will be that there will be no Republicans in the Northeast.

Maybe. That is certainly the lesson of the last ten years. Democrats have been able, time and time again, to brand social conservatives as way out radicals. But that was then. This is now.

The Preserve RINO strategy is a defensive strategy. It is a holding operation, trying to accommodate the natural domination of Democrats in the Northeast.

But the point of the Tea Party movement is to change the status quo. It is to energize natural conservatives and to begin the process of persuading moderates and independents that a Republican Party of common-sense conservatism is their kind of party. That's what a movement does. It moves the country.

When you start to do that, you leave behind the nice comfortable assumptions of the old order. You enter a revolutionary phase, where Americans are open to persuasion, where voters are up for grabs.

So the question becomes, should you use the strategy of the Allied World War I generals, and advance in lockstep, a step at a time? Or should you adopt the strategy of the German General Staff, that subordinate commanders down to the squad level should always be ready to exploit opportunities?

My feeling is that we are in new territory. My feeling is that the 50-50 nation of the past ten years is history. (Yeah. Remember 50-50 nation? Seems like ancient history!) My feeling is that we don't want to be fighting the last war.

And let's get back to the Germans again. In the Franco-Prussian War, General von Moltke had a real problem with over-enthusiastic unit commanders getting their units into trouble. But these tactical reverses didn't matter because Moltke had his armies in the right place at the right time. The French with their Chassepot rifles might win a local victory, but next day they would have to retreat.

That's where we are today. American politics is changing, and nobody knows where it is going, and where we will end up. It isn't going to be safe, and the old gang is going to have to give up its power.

In my view the Democrats will have a much bigger problem with that. But right now they are too busy laughing as the tsunami bursts over the GOP establishment. But don't worry. The tsunami is heading right their way. They are just too stupid to realize it.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with you 100%. And there is a lot at risk. But the way I see it, we're giving it our best shot and taking a chance on some really big dreams. After all, just how much worse can it get? I guess we'll just have to wait to see what happens in November.

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