It’s a Good Thing @GabrielMalor Isn’t Trying to Win Any Popularity Contests

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The morning Open Thread at AOSHQ gives their resident Eeyore a chance to voice his dissent from the GOP shutdown strategy:

So the score is: conservatives didn’t manage to stop Obamacare. Conservatives are oddly celebrating a shutdown they claimed they did not want. The GOP is getting blamed. Oh, and how are voters looking at this? A new Quinnipiac poll out this morning finds voters opposed 72%–22% to Congress shutting down the fed govt to block implementation of Obamacare.
Brilliant work. And, of course, we still have the eventual GOP surrender to look forward to, wherein the ultimate pointlessness of this strategy is revealed for all to see.

Lots of savage RINO-bashing from the commenters, which is fine and dandy. We don’t necessarily have to be waving our pompoms and doing backflips in celebration of the “Don’t Fund It” strategy. Nobody ever asked me for my advice on this, and if I had volunteered my advice, they would have ignored me, so I try to avoid the tempting illusion that anyone is going to be persuaded by my strategic advice or strategic criticism. “The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on.”

My bedtime reading recently has been The World Crisis, Winston Churchill’s 1,400-page history of World War I, which is not just a history but a memoir, given Churchill’s key role at the Admiralty, and subsequently in the Ministry of Munitions. This is the third or fourth time I’ve read The World Crisis, as it is my habit to re-read old books I like, because it is good to be reminded of excellent stuff you’ve forgotten since the last time you read it, and this time I found myself fascinated (again) by Part III, Chapter II, “The Blood Test.”

Here, Sir Winston examines the bloody folly of the “attrition” argument that was used to justify a series of murderous Allied offensives on the Western Front from 1915 through 1917. Churchill undertakes this survey after chronicling the failure of the Gallipoli campaign, for which Churchill was widely (and unfairly) blamed.

The strategic purpose of the Gallipoli invasion had been to support a British naval effort to force their way through the Dardanelles and to knock Turkey out of the war. The fall of Constantinople would have tipped the Balkans toward the Allies, and would have relieved pressure on Russia’s southern front. If the Dardanelles campaign had succeeded (as it quite nearly did, and might still have succeeded even after the initial setbacks, if only its importance had been more widely appreciated), the endless slaughter on the Western Front could have been averted, an Allied victory in the East may have forced the Central Powers to negotiate an early peace and . . .

Well, that’s all a gigantic “what-if” scenario, because instead the Allies gave up on the Dardanelles after the Gallipoli disaster, and concentrated instead on trying futilely to score a breakthrough on the Western Front. British commanders told themselves that their offensives of 1915-1917, which never broke and only slightly penetrated the German line at the cost of many thousands of British lives, were successful because of “attrition.” Yet Churchill said at the time (in a memorandum circulated during the Somme offensive of 1916) and demonstrated conclusively after the war, when both German and Allied manpower and casualty figures were available, that the British lost nearly 3-to-1 in casualties during their attacks. German casualties 1915-1917 were never greater than the number of new recruits they added to their forces, so that the “attrition” actually worked the opposite way, weakening the British armies in comparison to the Germans, who grew steadily stronger.

It was only in 1918, when the Germans mounted their own overwhelming offensive — attempting to defeat the Allies before the addition of U.S. troop strength could tilt the balance of the war — that the “attrition” worked in favor of the Allies. Ironically, then, it was the German offensive that ultimately defeated Germany.

Only after the German army had exhausted itself on the attack and the Allies then counterattacked (employing a powerful new weapon, the tank, in whose development Churchill played a key role), did the tide on the Western Front turn decisively against Germany.

All of this is evident in hindsight, but Churchill saw it with foresight. Yet his warnings about the futility of the Allied offensive strategy, and the wrongness of the “attrition” argument that justified that strategy, fell on deaf ears at the time. Churchill was absolutely right, but the truth was unpopular, and so hundreds of thousands of British troops died in pursuit of the wrong strategy.

The “what-ifs” of politics are much the same. Looking back now, I see the presidency of George H.W. Bush (the father, that is) as the moment when the revolutionary impetus of the Reagan triumph stalled and went off track. Newt Gingrich attempted, with some success, to recapture the Reaganite spirit in the mid-1990s, but the Lewinsky episode backfired and destroyed Gingrich rather than Clinton. This was followed, in short order, by the deadlocked Florida election of 2000, and by 9/11 and the War on Terror, which led the GOP eventually to the electoral disasters of 2006 and 2008.

For the past several years, then, the Republican Party has been trying to get back to the hegemonic position of dominance it enjoyed after the 2002 and 2004 elections. Yet those were wartime elections, and even in 2004, Bush only won by a narrow majority of the popular vote, so that we see how fragile and thin was the success of the GOP in the “good years” even while Karl Rove and other Bushies were talking about a Permanent Republican Majority.

So, the shutdown strategy: Is Gabriel Malor correct that this has all been a colossal blunder and a waste of time? Perhaps. We should not rule this view out, just because we don’t agree with it, or just because it’s what spineless RINO wussie-boys are saying.

The real problem, anyway, is that Republicans aren’t winning enough elections, so that Obama is president, we have only 45 GOP senators, and John Boehner’s House Republicans control only one-half of one branch of the federal government. Holding a weak hand, Republicans must play it the best they can. We must therefore ask what is the alternative to what their actual strategy has been?

Should House Republicans just “go along to get along”? Should they rubber-stamp whatever Harry Reid’s Democrat majority in the Senate passes? Would such a strategy of collaboration really be better than the headline-making brinksmanship we’ve seen?

It is not enough to criticize what has been done, if we cannot propose a feasible alternative that would be more successful. The problem is not Gabriel Malor, however, and it doesn’t advance the conservative cause to demonize him for his arguments. He may even be right.

 

WHAT? No, hell — of course he’s completely wrong!

Made you think about it though, didn’t I?

 

101 comments

  1. “You know what else?” Pelosi said. “They’re fakers”

    So now Republicans are “fake extreme hostage taking terrorists” ?

  3. Good thing you added those last two paragraphs. Otherwise I’d be asking you in some annoyance to name one nation where get along to go along stopped the statist movement.

    I might even have used litotes.

  4. It’s one thing to be wrong, principled or otherwise.

    It is another thing entirely to be Debbie Downer, especially when the fight is ongoing in the trenches.

    Let him depart our company.

  5. He is one of the reasons I read AOSHQ less and less. I read Krauthammer to get that perspective, i.e., give up, ALWAYS give up. Have you noticed that the one area the right has held the line, with the exception of RINOs, is abortion, and public sentiment is changing?

  6. No, I don’t feel that way, and that’s what I’m trying to say: Gabriel Malor may be wrong, but that’s not the fundamental problem.

    Remember how, just a couple of years ago, Rick Moran was constantly doing that same kind of Debbie Downer routine? Have you noticed Rick has stopped doing that? I have noticed. Sometimes I’ll click on an American Thinker headline and see that it’s a Rick Moran post and, for just a moment, I’ll think back to how much Moran pissed me off circa 2009-2010. But the flash of remembered anger passes quickly, and what Rick’s doing now is just standard blogging. He’s stopped trying to tell Republicans what to think or say or do — he has stopped playing political strategist, in other words — without ever apologizing for or retracting anything he said before, nor explaining why he’s changed his habits. And I haven’t inquired about this change, but I’ve noticed it.

    Gabriel Malor is out of step with conservatives and so what? Either he’s right or he’s wrong, but there’s nothing to be gained by demonizing him.

  7. Malor’s default position is, where virtue and politics clash, virtue gets the boot. He has fallen into the Beltway trap, where political machinations exist for their own sake, solely for purposes of attaining and retaining power, without any real thought as to what governance is for. He is willing to sacrifice millions of people into the maw of O-care, on the off chance that they’ll vote Republican in the next election. You are correct. He is either right or wrong. But his smug, self-satisfied, patronizing tone is not one designed to win converts either.

  8. I’m not demonizing him. I’m requesting that if he is not going to help, then he at least get out of the way.

  9. Let’s count up what Republicans have actually gained here.

    Um, we diverted the news cycles from Obama’s failures in Syria and his humilation at the hands of Iran and the utter failure of his Adminstration to set up their vaunted “exchanges” – a requirement if ACA was to work even in theory for even a while. IF we “win” a one-year delay, it means Democrats won’t be facing voters who’ve been screwed totally by the system in the midterms next year, the pain won’t start until 2015 in that case.

    Have I missed something? Oh, in exchange for giving Obama something to blast Republicans about and cover for his other failures, we get to feel better for shutting down some of the government for – how long?

    Yes, pure genius strategy here, isn’t it?

  12. Thus spake Adjoran – the resident cheese eating, surrender Monkey.

    You play the hand you are dealt. The shutdown is what is available and if Boner will stand and fight, it can work.

  13. Gabe may be out of step with Conservatives, but he sounds an awful lot like what a press agent for Speaker Boehner would sound like.

    Which *is* a real problem.

  14. Great post. It was just this morning, after endless silence, that I broke from tradition to voice my displeasure. Further, when the mealy-mouthed trolling at twitter became too much, I unfollowed him.

    There’s something about a person gleefully proclaiming victory over their own side that makes me a bit nutty.

  16. I don’t agree with delaying Obamacare in the first place. It should be repealed or implemented absolutely as passed, no waivers of any kind including reinstating the 1099 clause they pulled out a couple years ago. Defunding was sorta like a temporary repeal and was thus well worth shutting down the government for. Delay is not the hill to die on, so in spite of the outbreaks of cannibalism Daniel Greenfield has reported (not going be significant enough demographically) I’m not a fan of reason for this particular shutdown.
    Decimation would be much more effective both fiscally and socially as well as being a boon to personal freedom. Decimation applied to the federal workforce (excepting uniformed military) once a week for ten consecutive weeks would have this country back in the pink in no time.

  17. Because the press was ALL OVER Obama’s failures in Syria… and Iran… and the problems launching Obamacare…

  19. Eliminating one of every ten federal workers once a week for ten weeks wouldn’t help in that regard?

  21. Moran is still a downer. I have no idea why AT still publishes the character. Much of what he does publish is drivel.

  22. Too many have no idea what “decimation” means. There was a Legion that broke in the Spartican Revolt. They line up the Legion and counted every 10th man. The mates of that 10th man were required to beat him to death. Decimation was rare because the troops knew about it, and weer aware of the result breaking in battle.

    We use about 5 years of decimation in the FedGov’s workforce, and would be glad to apply it to the GOP establishment as well. Humane euthanasia would work for the Dimocrats.

  24. 569
    There is an important fact all should keep in mind when Gabe posts. He is an “openly gay conservative,” a self contradiction if there ever was one. Just saying. A house divided cannot stand.

    Posted by: andrew at October 01, 2013 09:27 AM (VjlMj)

    if only there were more people like andrew…

  25. That BS was the final straw this morning. They have been stricken from the favorites list. And the comment section is run by the government, right? It’s horrendously clumsy and screwed up. To read and post to.

  26. The historical lessons of the 1995-1996 shutdown now being told are somewhat dubious. Did the shutdown cost Republicans the 1996 Presidential election? It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Bob Dole could have won. Ross Perot made sure of that, but even without Perot and the shutdown, Dole was doomed.

    The Gingrich Republicans got reelected in the House and Senate. The balanced budgets at the end of the 1990s no doubt were made possible by the negotiations that ended the shutdown, although prosperity certainly helped too.

    What Republicans of the Karl Rove stripe don’t fully realize is that American don’t have to fully trust either party. Permanent majorities make people nervous. That’s why true blue Massachusetts elected Scott Brown in January 2010.

    With that in mind, a fear that Republicans might lose the House might motivate some to vote for Republican Senate candidates in 2014, especially when there is no plausible Republican President on the horizon for 2016.

    John Boehner is playing this just about perfectly. He came out last night after midnight looking tired and haggard. A rousing, fighting speech would have sent the worst message.

    Let Harry Reid rant. He got completely outmaneuvered last week by insisting that Ted Cruz’s speech was prescheduled and not technically a filibuster. You can’t call that obstructionist.

    Reid is getting outmaneuvered again this week.The longer federal employees have to wait for their paychecks, the more his insistence on a clean continuing resolution will sound mean.

    Yes, the Republicans will cave, The question is, what will they get in return for caving?

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