“...The right is 40 years behind the left and it remains a disorganized collection of potentials seeking a compass point. The “right” that got behind Mitt Romney consists of millionaires who want fewer regulations and easier imports from China, of social conservatives who are mainly ignored, except when voter turnout becomes an issue, libertarians who want more freedoms, and the non-ideological small business middle class and the struggling working class sensing their country and way of life slipping away from them.
Those groups could be welded together into a movement every bit as tribal and protective of its interests, capable of engaging in collective action on behalf of its own interests, as the urban machine vote. And that may already be happening with the Tea Party. But the counter-revolution of the bourgeoisie isn’t here yet. And there’s plenty of work to do to make it a reality.
The Republican establishment had its shot, twice. It put up moderate non-objectionable candidates. And it lost. It has no policies, beyond keeping the system going, and it has no ideas and no agenda, besides winning. It is a decadent political class fused with an even more decadent pundit class that views elections like these as a game, not as a life-and-death matter. It makes up lies and tells them to its base and hopes that the base will then forgive and forget being lied to and used one more time.
Moderation does not win elections. If you think it does, go look at the smirking face of Barack Obama. And then imagine him running for office back when Bill Ayers was building bombs. America’s new rulers were once considered far more extreme and unpopular than the Tea Party. Embracing radical and unpopular ideas is not a losing strategy. It is a short term losing strategy and a long term winning strategy so long as your ideas can be used to build a movement capable of turning those ideas into an organizing force.
The question is whether a right-wing movement can emerge that will make the vast majority of small businessmen in this country feel as negatively about a Democratic president as welfare voters feel about a Republican president?
This election has come close to testing that proposition. The time has come to test it further. The left went after gun owners, the way that it went after business owners, and the NRA used its hostility to build a powerful coalition of gun owners who broke the will of the elected left and made them turn on easier prey.
The key is organization. The left built its machines by convincing entire groups that they had a binding interest in a reflexive opposition to Republicans under a Democratic umbrella. Consolidating an opposition based on the same principles, that same sense that its financial oxygen will be cut if the Democrats win, is doable. But it cannot begin and end with the financials.
This is a cultural war and living in denial of that is senseless. Those social issues? They belong on the table. Because the alternative is that the table will belong to the left and we will be stuck arguing the level of regulation that is appropriate in a society whose entire moral imperative is based on the values of regulation.
Revolutions are not born out of success, they are born out of despair. They rise out of the dark hours of the night. They come from the understanding that all the other options are running out. Sometimes you have to fall down to rise and sometimes you have to hit bottom, to gather one last breath and fight to reach the top.
This is still a wonderful country. It is the finest place that this civilization has produced. Despite the events of the last day, it is worth fighting for.
Link: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2012/11/game-called-on-account-of-darkness.html
Also:
Let’s begin with what this isn’t. It isn’t a final statement on anything. It’s the opening to a discussion and the discussion is a look at how we can win.
The proposals and ideas that follow are not in compliance with any dogma. They do not call for abandoning principles, but they do call for pragmatic action in the here and now in order to secure the victory of those principles. That’s a tricky line, but that’s also how political battles are won.
Plenty of readers will have philosophical objections to some of what follows and I respect that, but you can either wait for the public to come around or retreat to high ground and wait for everything to collapse. Neither is a very useful strategy and it behooves us to remember that the left did not go up into the hills and wait for us to come around. They used these strategies to win.
It’s easier to focus on wedge issues. Immigrant benefits are unpopular. Take a group that is closely associated with Obama that eats up a lot of benefits. Focus in on what a drain they are. And then you get support for making cuts that target the “other” people.
The Democrats are forced to fight unpopular battles to protect unpopular constituencies and working class voters are won over because we aren’t out to make life hard for them, we’re making it hard for people who never worked a day in their life and expect everything.
Republicans used to understand tactics like these, but a politically correct tone deafness has taken over. Instead there are big technocratic plans that affect everyone and that is not the place to start.
The key principle is that you cut not based on size, but based on unpopularity, you work from outside in, instead of announcing that you brought a chainsaw and want to chop down a forest. Even if you can make the case for it, it will be unpopular and you won’t get to cut anything at all.
Reagan understood this kind of tactic. Romney and that whole crowd do not. And that is why they lost out on much of the working class, which felt personally threatened and did not feel committed to any reforms.
The Democrats understand that you don’t sell austerity. You sell class warfare. Republicans need to learn the same lesson. Don’t sell austerity, go after the ObamaPhoniacs.
The Dems can promise to reward the poor and middle class at the expense of the rich. The Republican can promise to reward the productive at the expense of the parasites.
The long game on winning an argument is by losing elections. The short game to winning elections is by losing the argument, seizing the center and abandoning your beliefs.
Sometimes elections have to be lost in a good cause. Sometimes they have to be done as part of the process of making an argument that the public is still not ready for.
The public wasn’t ready for Goldwater, but it was ready for Reagan. Goldwater didn’t lose. He prepared the ground for Reagan.
The left understands this process quite well. It fights battles and takes strategic losses to advance its arguments and accustom the voters to them. These sacrifice plays help it advance further.
The great thing that we must remember about defeat is that there are two kinds of defeats. Defeats with a purpose and defeats without a purpose. Defeats with a purpose accomplish something, even if it is only to air an argument. Defeats without a purpose do not.
Only time will tell which of these the election of 2012 was.
Link: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2012/11/how-we-can-win.html
Paul to Timothy:
“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come
For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
Traitors, heady, highminded lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away
For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,
Ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (2 Tim. 3:1-7)
Pretty well describes the situation and times.
If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, error will be;
If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendancy; If the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will;
If the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.” (Tryon Edwards, “A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern,“ 1908. p. 49)
“They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off. “ (Hosea 8:4)
“I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing. “ (Hosea 8:12)
“For Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth temples; and Judah hath multiplied fenced cities: but I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour the palaces thereof. “ (Hosea 8:14)
