Posted on 07/16/2015 5:49:23 AM PDT by Kaslin
Tactics are important. History is replete with examples of superior forces being defeated by smaller armies with a better battle plan. Conservatives lose for the same reason: We have no battle plan.
For years conservatives were content to be correct. Socialism doesn’t work. Fascism was a horrendous failure. Communism collapsed under its own weight. Each time conservatives were vindicated in their opposition to these failed branches of the progressive ideological tree. But at the end of each battle we made the mistake of assuming the war was over. It wasn’t and never will be.
Every progressive victory was preceded by repeated failure, sometimes decades of it. And each time, conservatives thought that was the end of the issue. A prime example of this is Hillarycare in the early ‘90s. It was a crushing rebuke of socialism and led to the Republican revolution in 1994. But the issue never went away, progressives never stopped working toward their goal, and, eventually, they won.
Remember the Contract with America in the ‘90s? A balanced budget amendment, term limits, Social Security reform, etc., etc. What happened to those policy goals? Aside from random candidates pledging to serve X number of terms, they aren’t talked about anymore with regularity on a national scale.
When Hillarycare went down, Republicans didn’t rush to fill that void. The problems with the health care system did not miraculously go away when that project went down in flames. There was no concerted effort to rally the country around a free-market-based health care system. There were just minor nips around the edges to appease various groups. The GOP’s failure to put forth a vision and fight for passage of any sort of reform in the wake of that victory led to a massive loss for the country on Obamacare.
I’ve asked several Republican members of Congress, mostly conservatives, about the party’s vision for replacing Obamacare. Most say they are waiting to get behind the plan of the eventual presidential nominee. But that’s not a strategy. That’s a dodge.
Rather than focus on issues that affect people’s lives and create jobs, such as replacing Obamacare with a real, market-based system that empowers individuals, Republicans sit and wait. But no matter how long they wait, Godot never shows.
Conservatives are rudderless, but progressives are relentless.
Not a day goes by I don’t get some email from the Democratic National Committee or Organizing for America or some other left-wing group extoling whatever issue they’re pushing. Forcing companies to provide paid sick leave to every employee? It’s a national imperative. Raising the minimum wage? Lives depend on it. “Stronger” overtime rules? People are being hurt. Guns? People are being killed by these inanimate objects and we must stop it now.
It’s all garbage and lies. These issues are nowhere near the top of the list of concerns of the American people, but, if history holds, some form of each will be rammed through Congress and signed by a progressive president within the next 20 years unless conservatives offer a counter-vision.
That’s not to say the GOP has to offer its own “solutions” to these problems. There are plenty of issues out there and no reason to let opponents choose the battlefield. But what do Republicans want to do? What’s their vision?
The left not only chooses the battlefields, it defines the terms of the fight. A lone monster does something awful with a gun, and the narrative becomes the need to control everyone’s exercise of their Second Amendment rights. The president and progressive politicians (and the media, but I repeat myself) stampede to microphones with a uniform message of how “something must be done.”
An illegal alien with a gun stolen from the government murders a woman walking with her father, and she might as well not have existed. For all his faults, were it not for Donald Trump, the name Kate Steinle not only already would be forgotten, it never would have been known. Yet progressives are unified in their “You shouldn’t punish everyone for the actions of one person” message (in this case; they do want to punish everybody for Dylann Roof’s crimes), and no prominent politician on the right points out the hypocrisy.
Progressives never stop, and they don’t care how many bodies or how much destruction they leave in their wake in achieving their objectives. Dozens of Democrats were thrown out of Congress for their vote in support of Obamacare, and they knew it would happen before they cast it. Republicans can’t bring themselves to use the constitutional power of the purse to force any concessions on Obamacare – even though that’s how most of them got to Congress in the first place – because they’re afraid of how people could perceive it and they might lose their jobs.
Democrats have a strategy, a battle plan they’re willing to do anything to advance. Republicans have facts, statistics, history and no clue what to do with them. If you can’t sell freedom, if you can’t convince citizens of the importance of liberty, you will lose. More importantly, you will deserve to lose.
If the GOP and whoever the presidential candidate ends up being can’t commit to an agenda with vision, one of growth and liberty with the tenacity their political opponents bring to its antithesis, 2016 will be another example of Republicans snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
We need to get the stomach to fight them on their own terms. Judeo-Christian civilization might not exist today if the Roman emperors Leo III and Constantine IV had not rallied Christian soldiers to fight back with ferocity against the Muslim hordes.
We may hold Christian values, but sometimes we need to fight like Old Testament warriors.
Gotcha’, but emphasize that the only solutions are returning to the free market.
Of course, please feel free.
Good example...
The other day there was a thread about this bureaucrat in Oregon who fined the Christian bakery for refusing to cater a gay wedding, and then slapped a gag order on them.
His home address is easily Googleable, and his daughter is an actress currently appearing in a well-publicized stage play.
If the tables were turned the Left would have angry, threatening mobs of protesters on the guy’s lawn and at his daughter’s play.
Do you really think we would fight fire with fire like THAT?
Fully agreed. In 1994 the best action for the free market was to do nothing IMHO. Now it would take active steps to get us back to one.
Well there was the Tea-Party. A million of them went to Washington in 2009 to demonstrate Obama policies that got minimal to no media attraction. Only daily mail UK covered the story. See link below.
Then the media outcry came and labeled them as kooks. Then of course for reasons beyond me, Republican elite distanced themselves from the Tea Partiers.
Also,IMHO, women (half of us) are the biggest reason America has declined like it has. Soccer moms, single moms, teachers, the tattooed and pierced.
Their emotion-based, illogical, appearance-based, faux guilt-ridden, feminized, uninformed voting is destroying us. They put Hussein over the top, and they’ll put Shrillary over the top next.
And Democrats keep on using them and putting them away wet, just like blacks.
How much did the so-called Conservative Congress actually cut the budget? Not "spent less than was originally projected" but actually spent less dollars in say 1998 than they did in 1997?
Congress has not been anywhere near Conservative since the Great Depression. They have just been slightly less Socialist.
Because we let them. It’s time to get nasty. Paramilitary nasty. Black Panthers did it for Obama.
Some drug stores are already set up for this.
Prices would go down and lower-cost options would become more available if people weren't subsidized to get the most expensive stuff.
The best way to solve a problem is keep it simple.
I just assume it is because human beings are inherently evil (Jer. 17:9), and evil policies eloquently expounded by evil politicians resonate with an evil populace.
No, liberals win because they never concede defeat. They fall back, regroup and attack over and over again. Read “The Art of War” if you get a chance.
“The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.” ― Alexander Hamilton
This author of this article has been reading my posts!
Dem strategists understand this, that’s why they fight dirty. “It’s the economy, stupid”, “war on women”, etc. When have Republicans ever come up with an in-your-face slogan like those? GOP leaders seem to think each Presidential campaign is a debating club, where you get points for being polite. So they continue to lose, because they always make sure a “get-along” wimp, not a fighter, gets the nomination. WRONG - you get rewarded for destroying your opponent, by any means possible. Why can’t Repub leaders & strategists understand this?? BTW, That’s also why Trump scares the crap of these “party leaders”.
Well said, sir. Well said indeed.
Sun Tzu. Everyone should read that. View what this administration is doing, including Jade Helm 15, through that lens. Know your adversary.
Ann Coulter stated one time that she would gladly give up her right to vote if all women had to, also.
The problem is Conservatives are happy to live their lives as they choose while allowing others to do the same.
Collectivists, particularly “progressives” insist on assuming complete control over every facet of every citizen’s life.
“They” includes the main stream media.
Obama never blinks or compromises (unless it is in dealings with our foes and enemies).
He is the most stubborn, strong-willed bully and narcissist I have ever seen, but it pays huge dividends for him. Everyone around him caves (except, again, our true enemies).
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