"four o'clock in the morning courage"
Posted on 11/06/2010 1:35:51 PM PDT by Brices Crossroads
To get some idea of the scope of the shellacking delivered to the Democrats in the 2010 midterms, it is worth noting that the new 112th Congress which convenes in January will be unprecedented in the lifetimes of most who are reading this now. No. It is not the first time the GOP has held the Majority. But it is the first time that the Democrats have failed to field a House caucus of over 200 members. Their 63 seat drubbing will leave them with 193, the first time they have fallen below the 200 member threshold since 1946. However, redistricting is going to send at least seven more seats to Red States where GOP governors and legislatures control the redistricting process. That coupled with the control of states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio (all set to lose seats) by GOP governors who will redraw the district to eliminate as many Democrat friendly districts as possible means that it is highly likely that the Democrat sub 200 status is going to last at least another cycle (perhaps longer), something which has not happened since 1926-28.
In short, the numbers and the enthusiasm clearly favor the GOP. As the New York Times observed back in September:
"For the first time since the 1930s, participation in Republican primaries exceeds participation in Democratic primaries, according to a report by the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University.
The study, which looked at elections held through Sept. 1 of this year, found that more than four million more voters cast ballots in Republican primaries than in Democratic primaries."
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/primary-voter-turnout-stays-low-but-more-so-for-democrats/
The numbers, which were 19 million GOP primary voters to 15 million Democrat Primary voters, are directly attributable to the Tea Party and its chief protagonist, Sarah Palin. The upsurge in turnout swept the GOP into its most lopsided Congressional majority in 65 years and set the stage for a domination that could span decades. Without the Tea Party and Palin, no such numbers would have been available.
Yet many kennel fed conservatives in the Establishment who promoted the likes of Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio and Bob Bennett over Mike Lee and Trey Grayson over Rand Paul, and didn't lift a finger for Christine O'Donnell, Joe Miller or Sharron Angle now sniff that that wasn't enough. Palin and the Tea Party lost Delaware, California and Washington State and West Virginia. The GOP only picked up six seats (They won 8 in 1994). In fact, so they say, the Tea Party and Palin actually cost the GOP seats by failing to back "more electable" Establishment candidates.
This is tantamount to claiming that the Union Army actually lost the Battle of Gettysburg. While it is true that the Union army decimated the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, inflicting about 25,000 casualties (nearly a third of its strength and coincidentally about the same percentage as the GOP wave wiped out in the Democrat House last Tuesday), they didn't completely destroy it.
Talk about making the perfect the enemy of the good. Let's take a close look at these supposed GOP losses. The GOP did not lose a single Senate Seat. They won six and there is no guarantee they would have won any more regardless of the identity of the candidates. And the seats they lost were generally in blue states or where they faced entrenched incumbents and their union allies (enemy ground, as it were). In some notable cases like Alaska and Delaware, there was overt GOP establishment sabotage. In spite of these disadvantages, the GOP picked up six seats and thanks in large measure to the Tea Party, five out of the six are solid Demint-style conservatives, not to mention Tea Partier Mike Lee who replaces moderate Bob Bennett in Utah. Because of the Tea Party and Palin , the GOP caucus is not only larger, it is substantially more conservative.
To return to the civil war military analogy, even after Gettysburg, when the war returned to the South's home turf, the Union would suffer disasters in the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, as it had the previous two years. Yet it had found a general who, like Lincoln, could do the math. The North had the greater numbers, but up until the advent of Grant, lacked a Commander with the will to use them. Fading the heat of a hostile press, Grant set out in April 1864 and never looked back. His first encounter with Lee at the Wilderness was a disaster that cost his army 17,000 men. Yet Grant knew he had the men and materiel to win. He paid no attention to the naysayers and pressed on, moving relentlessly by the left flank to Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor and Petersburg, sustaining horrific casualties along the way and harping criticism from the McClellans and the Northern press who wanted to compromise and retreat. Meanwhile, his Confederate opponent was dropping back, losing men he couldn't replace.
There is one candidate in the GOP who has the resolve and political skill to take similar political and rhetorical hits, because she understands one thing: We have the numbers. The other side knows what she is doing and they know the threat she poses for them. Her strategy is not complicated. Our side has the numbers, but has heretofore lacked the will to mobilize them. The left and its Establishment allies are going to try to destroy her and to demoralize her supporters. This was exactly the strategy employed by Lee in 1864. But Grant was a bulldog who simply would not be deterred. I think Grant and Palin share a characteristic that is sadly absent in politicians today: Sherman referred to it as "four o'clock in the morning courage" meaning that you could wake Grant up at four o'clock in the morning with the news that the enemy had turned his right flank and he would be cool as a cucumber. The fearless Palin too "doesn't scare worth a damn."
For the next two years, Sarah Palin is going to relentlessly press Democrats and GOP in the Congress toward Conservative Constitutional governance. They are going to be dropping back, losing ground at every turn. And when they diverge from that path (and they will) they are going to feel the sting of her rhetorical, as well as her political, whip. She will be moving on Washington by the Right Flank. Relentlessly.
Governor Palin realizes that the job cannot be completed without the Presidency in 2012. She realizes as well that this is going to be a hard slog, not a walk in the park. I don't think she is enamored of fame for its own sake and if there were someone else to do the job, she would be happy to yield the stage. But she knows as well that the current crop of McClellans in the GOP either will not, or cannot, restrain the federal leviathan and unleash the productive capacity of the American people. They are either too invested in the current system or too weakwilled or too politically ungifted to achieve it (and in some cases all three). She is the only politician on the scene with the political capacity, the understanding and the will to complete the reorientation of American political system from its current statist spiral toward proper constitutional interpretation and governance.
The Great Civil War Historian Shelby Foote said, referring to Grant and Lee: "Lee always understood the Union Generals. It is not that he didn't understand Grant. It was that Grant knew how to whip him. And he did."
The left understands Palin better than many conservatives do. They know what she is up to, which is one reason why they devote so much negative attention to her. But Palin, for her part, has shown that she knows how to whip them. And she will.
Ping!
WOW...excellent analysis!
I think Palin has some more Generals and recruits. Fight on now, and fight harder!
Nice!!!
OMG!
Thanks for posting this! What a truly inspirational article, and dead on accurate.
These next two years are going to be very entertaining to watch...
She is the skilled dressmaker who cared not for haberdashery because the knowledge was superfluous to her trade—but now that she is thrust into fashion ALL information pertaining to the business must be absorbed and then cleverly and creatively improved and applied if the personal ambition is to excel.
Gov Palin is proving more than able to the task and her deranged enemies more than capable of showing their phobic ass.
A very sound analysis, enhanced with an excellent (and historically very literate) metaphor.
That's until they show up for work.
Then, we'll see.
There's a contradiction there. It can't be the first time, if it happened before.
“it is worth noting that the new 112th Congress which convenes in January will be unprecedented in the lifetimes of most who are reading this now. No. It is not the first time the GOP has held the Majority. But it is the first time that the Democrats have failed to field a House caucus of over 200 members.”
Can you read the two sentences together?
“in the lifetimes of most who are reading this now.”
One thing she and TP have done is make it absolutely clear who is on our side and who isn't. We now know what many of us have long suspected, that there is an element within the GOP that is every bit as dangerous to the conservative movement as the avowed Marxists in the dim party. I actually have more respect for the dims as you know from the outset what their goals are, whereas the country clubbers are all about conservative deception, but their hypocrisy is now on full display. The mask has been ripped away.
The next two years are going to be very interesting as more individuals and agendas are exposed by Palin, DeMint and others in this new conservative movement. The attacks, accusations and anonymous attributions from the left and the establishment will be unprecedented and I only hope that true conservatives don't fall for this ploy. The deception is going to be overwhelming.
“the enthusiasm clearly favor the GOP
That’s until they show up for work.
Then, we’ll see.”
We’ll be watching them. And so will she. And they know it. As one old general said of his adversairies, “get ‘em scared and keep the scare on ‘em”
I think Palin and the Tea Party have accomplished that mission.
“We now know what many of us have long suspected, that there is an element within the GOP that is every bit as dangerous to the conservative movement as the avowed Marxists in the dim party.”
Exactly right.
Palin has a fight in front of her, no doubt about it. And she has a fight behind her as well. The people in the GOP who sabotaged Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, and (are trying, as we speak, to steal the election from) Joe Miller are the same ones who will try to destroy Palin, now if possible, but after she wins the nomination, if necessary. They want to keep control of the GOP and if it means ceding the White House to Barack Obama for another four years, that is a price they are willing to pay. The question every conservative must ask himself or herself is: Is this a price I am willing to pay?
We must be prepared to meet the Establishment and expose them at every turn for the frauds and backbiters that they are. We need to make the Roves, Gillespies and Fortis and their ilk feel, rhetorically and polemically speaking, that hell isn’t half a mile off.
Still, Sarah Palin is not the only one (there is after all Rush), but she is the only one directly in the battle politically and for that she is to be commended.
She reminds me of the owner of Secretariat who turned down $8M for the horse, knowing/believing he was worth much more.
“Still, Sarah Palin is not the only one (there is after all Rush)”
Rush, Palin and Mark Levin. A troika of conservative superstars.
Thanks onyx. Post 10 is nice too.
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