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?
You’re getting soft, QM: ‘humane euthanasia’????.
Psssst, that’s code for impalement …
What is the likelihood that the Quinnipiac poll is cooked? The headlines, the speeches, the impassioned harangues – all written and focus-group tested in the preceding weeks.
After all, we have only the word of the pollsters of their integrity. The IRS would certainly impact polling to insure the result they want.
There are lots of libertarians out there, and a lot of them did not support Ron Paul.
I’m one of them.
Tell it to the fabulous guys at hillbuzz.org. Personally, I’m very glad to have them on our side.
I didn’t state who it would be humane for. LOL!!!
It’s a Good Thing @GabrielMalor Isn’t Trying to Win Any Popularity Contests http://t.co/0zEqR6Vl9K
Most opinion polls are cooked. They are usually so by the way the questions are worded.
And/or by the composition of the sample.
Generally the questions are worded in a way they don’t have to make much of an effort on the sample.
Not that that stops them from trying.
Me, I think it’s great the government is “shut down.” It’s the first time in years -certainly since January, 2009- that the government is operating on more or less the appropriate level. I say make it permanent.
It takes little effort. They make a show of being random, or making a balance, but most end up with a skewed sample. Add in leading questions, and they get the result their ideology calls for. That pretty much seems to be the way they are polling the current shut down of FedGov.
Everyone keeps jockeying to be the one who claims some other guy is “calling for a shutdown.”
Every single person laying this at someone else’s feet is completely dishonest: no one beyond the legion of anonymous cranks and kooks (or out-of-power back-benchers) is calling for a shutdown as strategy. Being mostly lawyers in Congress (with radio talkers also well-represented by the bar), they cadge their words more carefully than that.
The point is, men with spines are not afraid of a shutdown. Men with no spines will cynically use the threat of a shutdown against others.
The correct thing to do is defund SCOAMFcare every single chance you get, regardless of threats from the other side.
The premise of the question is the flaw.
If they had asked, “Would you be for getting rid of the ACA no matter what it takes?” the answers would have skewed heavily the other way.
Conservatism as a political philosophy supports people living whatever lifestyle they choose, as long as it’s legal, and they don’t impose it on others.
Religious leaders on the right have changed mostly from shunning gays to welcoming them under the Christian policy of loving the sinner, not the sin.
So yes, there are gays who vote Conservative, and even put up with personal abuse for it.
The non-conservative aspect is found among the Gay Mafia types who infiltrate schools and government, and push their agenda on every child. They are predators, and should be dealt with as such.
But average, run of the mill gays like Gabe know that:
— K-Bob’s Codex
Where will they go when Hillary begins her run? It’s not Palinbuzz or GOPbuzz.
They are on Not-Obama’s side for their failure to properly prostate themselves for Obama.
Which votes separate the gays from the gay conservatives? DOMA? Prop 8? Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell? How are these votes demonstrative of fiscal conservatism?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Quinnipiac poll that didn’t seem to be delusional.
“Conservatism as a political philosophy supports people living whatever lifestyle they choose, as long as it’s legal, and they don’t impose it on others.”
That has always been my philosophy. Tribalism is a function of the progressives.
Try reading their site before you judge them. After Obamacare passed they declared war on all Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. The main guy behind the site, Kevin DuJan, has even met Sarah Palin and is a huge fan of hers.
What do any of those issues have to do with fiscal conservatism?
Actually since 2001. Bush was and is a good man, but the spending under Bush and co. didn’t help the fiscally conservative cause at all.
The issue isn’t that Malor is presenting a minority viewpoint that may be unpopular, it’s that it’s based on incredibly faulty logic. The idea that the media would have been spending the day detailing all the faults with the exchanges absent the shutdown is so incredibly naive I have a hard time swallowing that it was in earnest. Added to that Malor’s generally smarmy tone, and he merited the beatdown he got in the comments and in Ben K’s followup post.
Will someone bitch slap this mug?
I like Gabe Malor. I find his comments, at this junction, sort of Medvedish (Michael Medved is a pragmatic conservative). But I do not have to demonize him. He may be proved right, but I do not find his comments particularly helpful right now.
If you think they all vote the same way, then you’re committing a category error. In general, demographic groups do not vote as a unit. It’s mostly political groups that do that (i.e., they beat the average by a large percentage).
(The current, ridiculously-high percentage of blacks voting Democrat is an anomaly.)
Gabe was personally in favor of the court’s injunction on California’s Proposition 8, if I recall correctly. However he also identified the process leading up to it as corrupt. So these things are not as cut and dried as they might seem.
I don’t recall Palin singling out gays for any reason, so that makes sense. Defending marriage isn’t really about gayness. It’s about what marriage is (or is supposed to be).
The old methods sometimes work best.
I only read Ace. I skip his references to AP (the guy at HotAir). I skip the comments and cob loggers. Ace still gets it right often enough to be worthy of your time.
I know they are more satisfying and contribute greatly to the drop in recidivism as well as functioning as a visual warning to others that lawlessness will not be tolerated.
You know what they say: when you’ve lost Fox News, you really haven’t lost much.
Yep. Ayn Rand stated that tribalism is the archetype for racism.
RINOS are so much better strategists than Conservatives. Its why RINOS lose all the time.
The problem with the faint of heart is that they encourage others to be weak-kneed as well. Instead of trying to get the other side to go along with you, just push on past them.
Forex, stop getting into a little hissy fit about who’s to blame….say “I take the credit for shutting down this horrid monstrosity of a gov’t.. My only regret is that so little of the useless parts of it got shut down.”
I’m not sure how I would define “conservatism,” but I certainly wouldn’t define it as you did. What you called “conservatism” is more of what I call “liberal conservatism.” In any case, it is intrinsically different and opposed to “social conservatism,” where ethics and wholesomeness are required elements of its philosophy and social behavior.
http://alessandrareflections.wordpress.com/2013/09/27/what-is-a-wholesome-sexuality/
I think religious leaders on the right are moving to normalize homosexuality or to make light of it, exactly because they largely fail to have the means to help those with the problem resolve their problem. These issues were discussed here:
The new Pope, the Catholic Church, and homosexuality: a fish rots from the head down
http://alessandrareflections.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/the-new-pope-the-catholic-church-and-homosexuality-a-fish-rots-from-the-head-down/
Barilla Pasta and the new civil Inquisition
http://alessandrareflections.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/barilla-pasta-and-the-new-civil-inquisition-best-article-so-far-its-in-spanish/
“Conservatism as a political philosophy supports people living whatever
lifestyle they choose, as long as it’s legal, and they don’t impose it
on others.”
In other words, your type of conservatism supports tremendous harm-doing, since there is a lot of harm that can be done legally. Secondly, you empower LGBT people to do harm, by inclusion, but mostly by indifference to their deformed minds. In the real world, you cannot know what kinds of harmful acts people do in their lives, like policing every single person 24/7, and so basically you end up coddling and empowering a number of harmful people. Third, by neglecting to hold accountable the people with dysfunctional and deformed minds regarding sexuality, you empower a number of people who, at some point, do illegal acts as well – not to mention all the harmful types of behavior that are legal. Fourth, the impetus of most people who have a dysfunctional or deformed mind regarding sexuality will most often be to try to impose their deformed ideology onto others, in a more direct or indirect way – because they are all too happy to run away from acknowledging and facing their problems, instead of trying to resolve them.
In short, attempts to normalize homosexuality have as a basis neglect and irresponsibility in the area of sexuality and relationships. This failure is enshrouded in a discourse that paints it as tolerance and progress, but which, in closer inspection, is nothing of the kind.
http://alessandrareflections.wordpress.com/homosexuality-page/
Mark Levin takes on Sunshine Patriots like Malor and Bolling and Perino and Gutfeld:
http://therightscoop.com/mark-levins-epic-monologue-puts-the-government-shutdown-in-proper-perspective/
The so-called demonization that Malor receives is not due to his opinions or his arguments (as inadequately expressed as they are). It is due to his method of argumentation, which is outright Obamaish.
He attacks his opponents, not their arguments. It is for this that he receives the disrespect he so richly deserves.
I do miss the old names.
The budgets at the ends of the 1990s were not balanced.
Unless you assume that SS, Medicare, and Medicaid didn’t exist.
But they did, so….
That’s the real question: The alternative is what?
Do we just let ACA happen without a protest?
Do we make no attempt to aver this?
What was the other, “smart” play, that would have brough Reid and Obama to their knees?
Go on, I’ll wait…
Let’s not go down the “the polls are wrong!” path again. That was the bedtime story we told ourselves last fall.
I could care less about the polls. The only poll that matters is a year from now. After embracing the suck that is O-Care, the people will remember which side tried everything to stop it.
Principle is its own pragmatism.
Besides being gay, is there anything Malor brings to the discussion? Is that really the basis for paying attention to what he says?
Moran’s stopped carrying water for the Democrats?
And Gabe doesn’t need anyone to demonize him — he does that quite well by himself.
Moran is their “Chicago correspondent” and qualifies as a “conservative” only in that socialist worker’s pit.
Unless he’s forced to choose between being acceptable to northeast squish Republicans and being conservative. Then he caves bigger than Mammoth Caves.
Then why does Gabe routinely demonize anyone who doesn’t march alongside him in the weekly pride parade?
Fact is, no matter what happens, it will be reported as “the Republican’s caved”. More properly: “right-thinking, moderate Republican leadership put down the irresponsible extremists who keep blathering on about the Constitution”.
Read it since it started as a PUMA site. Like the rest of PUMA, what happens when their heroine, Hillary throws her hat into the ring. Now I only stop by when someone else bothers to link them. But thank you for the advice.
How do they not fall into the realm of fiscal conservatism?
Category error is possible K-Bob, but how did the stated goals of GOProud, Log Cabin Republicans, differ from the stated goals in the DNC campaign planks in 2012 and 2008?
Libertarianism is living whatever lifestyle one wishes, so long as it is legal (defined by whom? Kaitlyn Hunt? The SisterWives?) and not imposed on others (like paying for the costs of divorce?). Conservatism is living a lifestyle characterized by belief in the value of established and traditional practices in politics and society; and approaches change with moderation so that what is good in politics and society is reinforced, and what is bad is corrected.