The Republicans never seem to learn:
A top-ranking House Republican urged President Obama to step "off the campaign trail" if he wants to resolve the fiscal crisis, ahead of yet another rally where the president is expected to campaign for higher taxes on top earners.The president on Monday is flying to Michigan, where he will speak at the Detroit Diesel Factory.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., the No. 3 Republican in the House, suggested Sunday that the president's itinerary has left Republicans to negotiate with themselves.
"He's been to Pennsylvania. Tomorrow he is going to Detroit. It's now time to govern. The election is over," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
What, you think The Won doesn't know where his strengths lie? Where his adversaries are weakest? You think he'd do as he's done, and is continuing to do, if he, or those from whom he takes counsel, thought there was a better, more effective way to advance his agenda?
It must be a learning disability. Obama and the Democrats have repeatedly triumphed over the Republicans, both in federal electoral contests and in negotiations within the government, yet the Republican leadership refuses to entertain the possibility that just maybe, the Democrats might know what they're doing!
The Democrats' tacticians have learned important lessons, both from the setback of 2010 and from the successes of 2008 and 2012. The Republicans haven't learned one blessed thing. The cited article isn't the only evidence to that effect.
The Democrats have learned, above all else, that it's vital that they keep Obama campaigning. The Won is in no objective sense involved in "governing." His value to the Left is as a rhetorician and totem creature ("the first African-American president"). When he's gallivanting aroung the country making substanceless promises and lying out both sides of his mouth, he's delivering maximum value to his masters. It's when he's engaged himself in the negotiating process that the Right has gained ground.
The old joke about courtroom litigation runs, "When the law is against you, pound the facts. When the facts are against you, pound the law. When both are against you, pound the table." The Democrats' leadership is fully aware that both Constitutional law and the facts of America's steady deterioration are against them. But they have title to a most excellent table-pounder who can fly anywhere he likes at government expense. They'll keep him flying around the country pounding tables long enough for the GOP contingents in Congress to disavow their campaign pledges and remove their remaining spines.
It's not rocket science, Gentle Readers. Really.
Per usual, a well-stated and thoughtful piece, Fran.
ReplyDeleteBut I've been reading stuff at Heritage and Townhall and PJM and a couple of things occur to me:
1) As usual, people express themselves better than I do;
2) YOU posit principles and possibilities as well as ANYONE I have read, and I include Buckley, Victor Hansen and others;
3) BUT, we are losing. For all the talk about taking back the educational, media, cultural stuff. . . it's not happening.
4) It's too late. I should have home-schooled my daughter. . . or at least taken her to Sunday School for the first 10 years of her life. I didn't. It's too late. It's not that she doesn't know right from wrong. It's that she doesn't have a gut-level response to all the communal, one-world, "What do you FEEL about history?" nonsense that she and her children are gonna be subjected to.
The anti-individual stuff is coming, whatever name it goes by. In two or three generations the idea that the Declaration and the Constitution were created to define and protect the Individual and his reason and his right to exist AS AN INDIVIDUAL will be gone.
Reason will be perverted from that which a person can know and understand for himself, to that which is understood and believed by his "peers."
America was a unique experiment and moment in time. You had entire generations that taught themselves to read, taught a tolerant religion, and believed in individuals first and rulers or masters or governors not at all. (Or as some paradigm to be beaten.)
That America was borne of real hope, not the class-envy we see now. It can't be recreated by guns and redoubts. In a Heinlein world, we'd fly off to the Moon, or something.
There will NOT be a "separate" America as Butterworth writes about. There is a guilt about race that will never let a "folk" create a nation within the borders of the United States that is committed to religion, culture, ethnicity or even a strict moral code.
The best we might hope for is a stubborn enclave of educated, "Westernized" holdouts in Iceland while the rest of the world goes Muslim and/or U.N. (they may not be mutually exclusive.)
The future is communal thoughts and feelings. The age of rational, independent Man is rapidly coming to an end.
To Conservatism, Inc., it is rocket science. Rockets only work if they conform to certain basic engineering principles.
ReplyDeleteBut since Republican leaders have no principles with which to guide their "rockets", their strategy, they doom themselves and us to the present nightmare and worse to come.
They have all the power they need to simply stand up and say, No. But they're more afraid of the Leftist Media insulting them than they are of their own constituents renouncing them.
No one knows the future - not us, not the other side(s). Our current trajectory looks grim - but history is full of miraculous, unforeseen turnabouts or U-turns. Take the very existence of the country of Poland for example. It had ceased to exist...twice in 100 years as its larger neighbors absorbed it. But by 1920 it successfully fought off a major invasion of the expanding Soviet Union and so won itself 18 years of independence before again being divided, occupied, suppressed. And yet Poland is alive today while the empires that crushed it are long gone.
ReplyDeleteThe key elements that allowed Poles to survive despite total political and public persecution were: Catholicism, local tribal/extended family allegiances, a culture prizing education and hard work.
Catholicism lost 80% of its bishops, priests, nuns, and 99% of its assets...but survived literally underground. Most Poles endured a public rejection an outlawing of religion from 1945 to 1982 by bringing their faith indoors. It's not entirely crazy to suspect most Christians may have to do likewise in the West.
They kept having kids - and focused on as strong a home life and education as they could given the Communist Party, spies, etc.
They all - young and old - looked back to classic Polish culture and history for inspiration; their saints, kings, heroes, legends, victories, etc. This is happening today among many Americans who are learning our great history and persons for the first time...
They were good workers and trustworthy - this can't be overstated...as Communism took over everything it became increasingly obvious that some decent, trustworthy souls were needed for jobs that couldn't have spies and supervisors constantly making sure things were'nt stolen. So looking at these crushed and private Catholic Poles who did the minimum as far as "patriotic duty" to Marxism was concerned and 'kept their mouths shut' about Jesus and His Church... the powers that be allowed them some space to breath (and work) since the state needed them.
This is why Solidarity wasn't crushed when it rose up: the state couldn't afford to lose critical workers. Solidarity was full of Galts - and the communists knew it. So they couldn't just shoot them or arrest them all since doing so would lead to social collapse.
In 10 years it'll be the Homeschoolers who'll be the only college graduates capable of thinking clearly, reading, writing, and operating delicate, difficult machines and programs.
It'll be the conservative rump whose blood will be 'clean' - and whose "lifestyle" doesn't require massive subsidies and attention.
In 20 years the meek will inherit the earth.