Sarah Palin (She plays chess while everyone else plays checkers)

There is a familiar aphorism among Palinistas and right-wing blogs that Sarah Palin plays chess while everyone else plays checkers. I agree.

What I would like to do is illustrate how Sarah Palin is playing chess so deftly, what moves she plans to make once she enters the presidential race (the political lay of the land) and at the same time explain the deficiencies in the chess game prowess and execution of Mitt Romney and how these deficiencies may lead to his eventual downfall in the GOP primaries.

In interest of full disclosure I am one of the worst chess players in the world. I have down all the basic moves and I know the #1 goal of the game is to prevent your king from being captured in a move called checkmate (and thus lose the game) and understand the basic strategies of the game, but simply I cannot execute.

I am like the duffer who has a basic understanding of how a professional golfer can hit a ball over 300 yards in the center of the fairway but cannot myself demonstrate the necessary hand-eye coordination, shift of weight movements, striking power, and the proper swing plane so that I can consistently hit the golf ball in the middle of the golf club face to achieve that feat.

Imho, Sarah Palin is like the finely-tuned golfer who consistently strikes the golf ball in the middle of the golf club face while Mitt Romney is a golfer whose mechanics are suspect at times and often finds his golf ball in the rough, bunker or hazard and simply beats himself due to a failure to execute the appropriate golf shot under pressure or in crucial or pivotal situations or he can also be compared to a golfer who always lays up on par 5 holes rather than going for the green in two.

But back to chess. Sarah Palin is like a grandmaster chess player who knows all the moves and when to employ them in the game to her full advantage, while Mitt Romney is more like me--he plays with a lackluster temperament and basically knows what he wants to accomplish throughout the game but simply can't pull it off.

With that in mind here are ten chess moves, strategies or scenarios that I would like to discuss in the context of Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney to illustrate why the latter may not be able to get back his front runner status ever.

1) In chess there are two basic approaches to play generally: To go on the attack for the most part to strike early vs. to play defense in hope of counterattacking successfully and to win a game of attrition.

Sarah Palin is a predator who stalks her prey, while Mitt Romney is like a big-game hunter on safari in Africa awaiting his prey to enter his domain of choice at the time. As Palin has not entered the "game" yet, I will deal strictly with Romney from hereon for the most part.

How do I know this is Romney's chess or political strategy or his modus operandi?

b)His record of NOT engaging the enemy or opponent in an aggressively political manner. Now this may be as a result of Romney's personal belief system, it could be a rational political strategy on his part (or that of his advisers) or it could be that Romney is NOT capable of "playing the agggressor" or acting the part but regardless there is no mistaking his predominant defensive posture when he is playing the "political" game.

And I can tell you in the game of chess that is usually a losing strategy. The opponent dictates how you will play the game and basically "calls the shots". You become so concerned about protecting your king (in political terms losing the GOP nomination) that you eventually succumb to the mounting attacks over the duration of the game by losing valuable chess pieces (queen, rook, knight, bishop) and end up simply being completely surrounded or enveloped after your resources (the ability to mount an effective counteroffensive) have been severely diminished or depleted. This is where I think Romney is headed if he is not in the early stages of the process already.

2) Chess starts off as a game where several pawns are moved ahead on the board supposedly to allow one an opportunity to get the lay of the land, to gain the early upper hand on the opponent and to eventually allow the more valuable chess pieces to "seize the day" and to infiltrate the defenses of the opponent in order to probe for vulnerabilities and in order to weaken your counterpart's ability to defend his or her king.

But Romney looks at pawns differently imho. For him they are simply there to be used and sacrificed in the name of expediency capture for capture to prevent any self-sacrifice on his part and for facilitating the sacrifice or manipulation of others for his cause or to his advantage and to maintain his front runner status.

Romney has already sacrificed his pawns during the primary season leading up the Ames Straw poll but it appears he does NOT have any clue how to use his most valuable pieces now to put himself in a superior position or conversely make his opponent(s) more vulnerable. Instead he appears to favor a stand-pat strategy and this strategy did work fairly well s long as other opponents were not willing to become the aggressor "and take the game to Romney" in order to infiltrate his defenses. Rick Perry has changed that equation and Palin will take it to even a higher level of assertiveness once she enters the race.

3)The pincer movement in chess usually involves the knight penetrating the enemy defenses and putting the enemy king in check while putting another valuable piece (commonly the rook) in jeopardy of also being captured while not being subject to capture yourself. The opponent is forced to move his king out of harm's way because the knight is the one piece that cannot be stymied by moving another piece in to block its movement as it moves two squares straight and one square to either side. It is the piece I have the most trouble defending against because I don't have the analytical mind to anticipate the move beforehand to take my king out of jeopardy before the move can be made. By definition a pincer movement catches the opponent completely off guard or by surprise and by then it is too late to respond. The enemy in chess is forced to defend his king thus surrendering his rook or other valuable piece in the process. There is no other option.

I believe Mitt Romney has the same problem, Yes, he has advisers to counsel him about these kinds of political situations but it one thing to be told about the possibility of a pincer movement but it is entirely another matter for Romney to be capable of enough to anticipate an event of this magnitude to prevent the capture of a valuable chess piece. Consulting with his advisers ipso facto is too late. And by Perry now gaining superiority over Romney among seniors and college grads, Mitt is forced figuratively to move his king (seniors)but in so doing he loses a valuable demographic constituency, college grads, which severely weakens his ability to compete as the capture of an opponent's rook is a devastating blow to the opponent in the game of chess.

4)The rook moves in a straight line in either direction on the board and is considered the powerful piece other than the queen. Imho, this is the one piece that Mitt Romney is figuratively most comfortable with. Romney prefers to move in a straight line when it comes to political strategy and relies on linear thinking to convince GOP primary voters to support him. Unfortunately for Romney, the GOP primary voters may be on the lookout in this election cycle for someone who possesses non-linear thinking or one who employs asymmetrical warfare and is willing to employ a comprehensive political general election strategy that is less predictable and more unconventional to match and compete with the Alinsky tactics of the Left.

5)The bishop is a piece that moves diagonally but must remain confined to either the black square or white square it originated from during the duration of the game. The bishop is really symbolic of Romney's inability or lack of propensity to move outside his "ideological box" and to be actually or by perception seen as someone who lacks the ability to branch out beyond his self-regulated boundaries that were laid out by himself when he commenced the campaign or to consider other choices or alternatives on how to proceed on the fly.

6) The queen is the most valuable piece in the game of chess in terms of winning the game, being so valuable that if you lose your queen without your opponent losing his in an immediate exchange it means that there is a high probability you will lose the game or see the futility of your position and be forced to resign (in political terms leave the campaign).

The queen can be compared to Mitt Romney's ability to fundraise and to tap into his private fortune if he needs to finance his campaign and the cachet he brings with him as "the next-in-line candidate". In terms of the game of chess, Romney will do anything to prevent his Queen from being captured and will not agree to trade his queen for the opponent's queen. He knows if he is on a par with the other candidates in fundraising and/or cachet he doesn't have the requisite personal or political assets to win the nomination. His entire strategy imho, is based on his belief most of his opponents will start off their campaigns without a queen or if they do eventually develop one because of his "last man standing strategy" they will eventually be worn down (lack of fundraising ability as primaries drag on) and again simply be forced to resign from the chess match.

7)Unfortunately for Mitt Romney the game of chess can be won without one's opponent capturing the other's queen. The other way to win the game is to pick off the valuable and vulnerable chess pieces of one's opponent and weaken his or her overall defense and his or her ability to counter and save the pieces from capture. Imho, this is Sarah Palin's strategy to deal with Mitt Romney at present unless Rick Perry can administer the death blow to Romney within the next month which I think is highly unlikely: To weaken Romney over time by eroding his support and his ability to mount an effective counteroffensive despite Romney still in possession of his queen and then to eventually overwhelm Mitt with superior firepower and resources.

Of course Perry could do both Palin and himself a favor if he can capture Romney's queen before Palin enters the race if Romney's GOP establishment donors and major supporters abandon ship and cut off his fundraising lifeline for good.

8)Sarah Palin is a proponent of asymmetrical warfare and OODA (observe, orient, direct and act) and a genius in moving her valuable pieces around the chess in a lethal and scintillating combination of tactics and maneuvers depending on the configuration of the board and point in the game. In boxing terms she could considered a one-two punch or in baseball a triple threat.

With regards to Mitt Romney, he really s a one-trick pony whose strategy is entirely symmetrical and totally predictable which makes it much easier for Palin to attack Romney at his most vulnerable spots and to anticipate his future moves while on the prowl and not have to be concerned about Romney coming up with some new, funky strategy to penetrate her already well-fortified defense.

9)And Perry is now exploiting Romney's inability to mount any credible offense. In football terms Romney is even having trouble now getting first downs. Presently Perry appears to be taking steps to take advantage of Romney's lack of initiative by going on the attack now and apparently Romney has chosen not to respond but to sit tight. Perhaps the real answer is he either doesn't have an effective response ready to go or he might be consulting with his team now about where he goes from here.

At the present time Romney should take extra precautions to ensure the safety of his queen. He has suddenly become very vulnerable.

10)And finally Palin has NOT even yet entered "the chess tournament" and thus still possesses her full complement of pawns and valuable pieces to protect her from the attacks, counterattacks, and counteroffensives of her enemies. Yes, both Perry and Romney possess active Queens who are NOT encumbered and at the same time have the freedom of the chess board and thus neither can probably be dispatched to the sidelines quickly but if anyone can win a lengthy war of attrition complemented by a highly sophisticated and imaginative "dominant queen strategy" to infiltrate an opponent's defensive positions in a stealth-like fashion and strike like a cobra it is Sarah Palin, the Queen of the Palinistas.

And now you all want all of us to trust her

It’s good to see some of you finally getting past the "quitting" meme, which has never been anything more than a slipshod attack on her character using cheesy semantic confusion over the word "quit." (quitting smoking, for example, is actually a good thing). So your move to the alternate ground of challenging her competency is actually an improvement, an admission there is no character flaw to exploit via the resignation. I welcome that change of strategy.

As to your question of trust, yes, we should trust her, and the resignation is part of the reason why. Here’s the analysis:

Your argument for not trusting her is that she let pass a law that was capable of being used against her. The first problem with that theory is that the ethics law was not the only device used against her, as there were some 150 Freedom of Information Acts requests coming at her at the same time as the ethics complaints. It was the FOIA’s that were racking up the costs for the state, while the ethics charges were racking up the costs for Palin personally. Thus a major part of the legal weaponry trained on her actually preexisted the Palin administration. You can’t blame her for that.

As for the law itself, for any flimsy ethics charge filed, she had to retain an attorney rather than defend herself, and she had to pay for that attorney out of her own pocket. In the scenario of an Illinois-like Blagojevich case, this would make sense, because the Palin ethics reform law, just coming off the Murkowski era scandals, envisioned a system that would prevent a corrupt state officer from using state funds to delay or deny justice. The concept is good, and it reflects both Palin’s signature frugality and her strong intent to uproot corruption.

But didn’t the law fail to prevent potential abuse by political enemies of state officers? Theoretically, the law prevented abuse, as the law had a prohibition against either side discussing material aspects of the complaint until after it had been adjudicated. In theory, this destroys the political incentive, as there’s no political use to it if you can’t make nasty headlines until after the case is proven frivolous. Therefore, the law was frugal, made state officers accountable to the people, and was explicitly designed to prevent abuse of the system.

So what was the “fatal defect” in the ethics law? Just for fun, humor me on this, try to guess what it was. If you can’t guess, do one more thing before reading further. Try googling for the answer. When you’re good and tired of coming up empty with all that, come back here and read the next line.

….Ready?

OK, here it is. The complainants cheated. They just broke the law by immediately leaking their charges to the press during adjudication, enabling them to use the press as a political weapon against Palin, even though the law was specifically designed to prevent that. Whereas she, being obedient to the law, could not defend herself against wildly misleading headlines. How does one defend against treating a law as if it doesn’t exist, if it is not enforced? Is that a defect in the law, or in the culture?

Again, I am an attorney, and I have seen selective enforcement at work. A law may have the finest enforcement mechanisms built into it, but even the best laid legal plans can be rendered meaningless if the officers, agencies, bureaucracies, political appointees, and fellow legal professionals, who have the duty of putting the words of the law into real effect, don’t take that duty seriously. You cannot solve such problems by writing a better law. You need better people.

One other problem the law had, and still has, is that there is still no way to prevent an individual from coming up with an unending series of frivolous complaints. You have to preserve the right of the people to present their grievances and seek redress. That goes to a root freedom preserved by our federal Constitution. But you can change the incentive scheme, and a revision of the law, put in place after Palin’s departure, accomplishes just that. The state officer can now expect the state to pay the legal bills if the complaint proves to be unfounded. This new condition, while still not perfect, is a step in the right direction.

And that’s the real problem with law in general. You never really arrive at perfection. There has never been a law written that could not be abused by a determined and well-funded adversary. So your question is wrong. It’s not, could she have had the lawyers write a law that had no unintended consequences. That is patently impossible. The only one who never has to deal with unintended consequences is God Himself. The question is, how did she respond when the predictable unintended consequences manifested themselves.

And that’s how we get back to the trust question. Generals, Presidents, and all leaders with extraordinary responsibility must often face novel circumstances, new challenges that seem to turn the old rules on their head. It is the measure of a leader to see whether they stay trapped within the box of conventional wisdom, or whether they can do what Alexander the Great did when presented with the puzzle of the Gordian knot.

Do you remember the legend? The people of Gordium had a complex knot about which there was a prophecy, that whoever loosed the knot would rule Asia. Alexander attempted to undo the knot by ordinary means and became frustrated. But his determination led him outside the box, and he asked an unthinkable question, why does it matter how the knot is unloosed, so long as it is unloosed? So in one powerful blow, with his sword he severed the knot in two, and earned himself a right to claim the prophecy.

Palin faced a problem that was unsolvable within the confines of conventional wisdom. There was no mechanism, either legal or political, to stop either the FOIAs or the frivolous ethics complaints, and no way for a sitting governor to change the law by which she was being attacked without being charged with serious conflict of interest and abuse of power. It was a deadly trap that would suck the life out of her governorship, ruin her political future, and put her in the untenable position of violating her oath of office, as she could no longer fulfill her duties to the best of her ability, as she had sworn.

But she is not like ordinary politicians. She is a Christian, and has for many years held before her mind’s eye the example of Jesus, who though he had all power, was able to let it go for the benefit of those he loved. It is unthinkable in the world of politics, and I believe without precedent in the history of American governors, that anyone with such a grant of power as she had would ever set it down voluntarily. From their blogs it is evident that her opponents never saw such a move coming. They expected to destroy her; they did not expect her to escape. But she did, by the grace of God. She stepped outside of the box, and in a single blow cut the Gordian Knot. She threw the ring of power to blazes, and trusted herself to God, so that she could keep her promise to the people of Alaska.

Oh yes, we can trust her.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.