HOW REPUBLICANS OUGHT TO ACT

West Coast Maverick Fight On By Michael Walsh March 19, 2013 4:30 P.M. Comments 337 Print Text    Advice to the RNC: Don’t “re-brand.” Fight. That’s it. Fight. Fight them on every front, fight them in every state, fight them on television and in print and on the airwaves. Confront them at every opportunity, seek out and embrace conflict, and fear not bullies like Chuck Schumer (the living embodiment of the Lefty Sneer), Dick Durbin, and passive-aggressive corruptocrats like Harry Reid. Don’t make nice with them, don’t play fair with them, don’t reach across the aisle and above all, treat them and their ideas with exactly the same amount of respect with which they treat yours: none. Contempt is the only language they understand. Remember that, thanks to Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Alinsky Left, the personal is now political, so get personal; all’s fair in love and war, and politics isn’t love. AsPat Caddell just reminded the GOP, his team plays to win, and doesn’t really much care how it does it — “by any means necessary” is their motto. If you’re not using their own rules against them, you’re not playing the game. Put them on defense for a change and see how they like it. Create your own version of Media Matters — tax exempt! — and cut their bylined operatives and apparatchiks off at the knees. Revamp Fox News’s prime-time lineup — I said this on the most recentNR Cruise, so I might as well own it — by redeploying Sean Hannity (who’s already got plenty of exposure on the radio) and Bill O’Reilly (whose Factor has devolved into a parade of tired hacks and buy-my-stuff hucksterism) and replacing them with somefresh new faces before their ratings start to slide. Hey, MSNBC’s doing it. Cashier your risk-averse krack kadres of kampaign konsultants, whose idea of cutting-edge technology is ’70s-style television media buys (from which they profit handsomely) and who never seem to pay a price for being spectacularly wrong. Forget tactical management-school metrics and instead concentrate on strategy: If you set out to take Vienna, then take Vienna. Conjure up the ghost of Lee Atwater and put him back to work. Never listen to Dick Morris again. Get rid of the old guard. John McCain’s typically nasty “wacko birds” crack about Ted Cruz and others ought to finish him as a force in the Republican party — and he would be finished if not for his constituency in the media. With millstones like McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Boehner, conservatives have to fight through their own officers to get to the enemy. Knock them out in the primaries before Karl Rove (priceless video at the link) knocks out your candidates. Nominate presidential standard-bearers who actually want to engage their opponents ideologically, and know how to sell the fundamental concepts of America, such as personal liberty and spiritual freedom. Draw sharp distinctions between Left and Right and put a positive spin on small-”r” republican virtues. Force the Democrats to defend their unmanly culture of dependency, and mock their misuse of the word “compassion.” Tighten the borders but trust in the cultural alchemy of America and lose the implicit xenophobia. Don’t tumble too hard for Marco Rubio or Rand Paul or whoever the flavor of the month is until you get a fuller picture of them. Remember the Palin/Scott Brown ticket? Don’t confuse vulture capitalism with capitalism itself. Stop putting up millionaires with nothing to lose and instead steal a page from the Democrats’ playbook, and run hungry young pols who miraculously become millionaires while in office; the Democrats understand the difference between honest graft and dishonest graft, and so should you. Remember that, thanks to the miracle of the two-party system and a mouthpiece media, there’s absolutely no downside in becoming a criminal organization masquerading as a political party so long as you cherish the right platitudes. After all, fascism in the name of “doing it for the children” always sells, even by the party that’s busily aborting children yet somehow thinks the Social Security system will last forever. Strike preemptively. By now, what Obama’s doing ought to be obvious even to Weepy John, the epitome of Rotary Club republicanism. (But don’t take it from me; take it from Democrat Mickey Kaus.) Why wait for the president or his henchmen to push the progressive peanut another inch up the hill? You just know that if the money grab in Cyprus succeeds, it’s only a matter of time before the Democrats try it here, in the Marxist name of “fairness” and “income equality,” so beat them to the punch. Why not, as Glenn Reynolds suggests, introduce a bill to prevent just such a thing, and dare them to vote against it? Aim for total victory. It ought to be child’s play to send the party of slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition the way of the Whigs and the Know-Nothings. What are RICO statutes for, unless to be used against the Tammany Party and its continuing rackets? Why isn’t what’s happening in Detroit — the slow-motion demolition of one of our great cities at the hands of a single political party — not on the lips of every prominent Republican? Or the parade of prominent Democrats heading off to the slammer? Only a party as timorous and as brain-dead as the GOP could fail to hang what’s habitual behavior around the Democrats’s necks, and make them pay for it at the ballot box. Finally, stop cringing. As Vito Corleone exclaims as he slaps Johnny Fontane around: “You can act like a man!” Stop caring what your opponents say about you. Stop the counter-factual whining (“if this were Bush . . .”). Of course, they’re going to be opposed to you — that’s the nature of opposition. Politics ain’t beanbag, and smart gangsters and politicians alike understand that. Get in their face, harass them, worry them, give them not a moment’s peace or respite. Come at them constantly, in shifts and in waves. Never back down. But act like it’s fun while you’re doing it — that’s what being a “happy warrior” means. You may lose, you may win. But at least fight.