Politics is not about debate. Politics isn’t about compromise. It is not about “image.” Ultimately, politics is about power.
This is something Republicans have a habit of forgetting. Because the Republican Party represents the respectable middle class, its leaders tend to be concerned with bourgeois respectability, an encumbrance which does not inhibit Democrats. Having assembled a coalition of the aggrieved and impoverished — including criminals, drug addicts, perverts and decadent intellectuals — Democrats unapologetically advocate the selfish interests of their constituent groups, whereas Republicans seem almost embarrassed by their own middle-class supporters.
Republicans have long complained about how Democrats are able to get away with things that no Republican would even dare attempt. The way Democrats turn Supreme Court confirmation hearings into bizarre “show trial” circuses — first with Brett Kavanaugh, now with Amy Coney Barrett, continuing a tradition that dates back to the original “Borking” — is an example of this disparity. Never have Republicans done to a Democratic nominee what Democrats routinely do to GOP nominees. Democrats can get away with this because most of the media (being decadent intellectuals) are part of their coalition, and can be trusted to apply the desired partisan “spin” to these political dramas.
Democrats are not embarrassed about seeking power, and make no apologies about wielding power. They constantly accuse Republicans of authoritarian ambitions, Democrats openly act in dictatorial manner whenever they obtain power. Just look at the way Democratic governors like Andrew Cuomo, Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom have imposed draconian policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This morning, I made the mistake of turning up the sound on my office TV, and endured Sen. Diane Feinstein’s questioning of Judge Barrett. A more shameless exercise in emotional pandering could scarcely be imagined, and I turned down the sound before Feinstein finished, rather than to let this spectacle further disturb my mind.
What we are witnessing, not only in these Senate hearings, but on a daily basis in the presidential campaign, is a remorseless crusade by Democrats in pursuit of power. Anyone claiming to be a conservative must oppose this, and I cannot imagine how David French, Rick Wilson, et al., justify their project of sabotaging the Republican opposition, merely because of their personal distaste for President Trump.
There’s an old country saying, “Any stick to beat a mad dog,” which is to say, in an emergency (e.g., attacked by a rabid animal) one does not hesitate to use whatever weapon comes to hand in self-defense. Such is our case now, and as we see the Democrats foaming at the mouth and snarling with bared fangs, we ought to be grateful to Trump for volunteering as the stick with which we beat these dangerous beasts.
What a lot of people don’t understand about me is that I was born and raised a Democrat, in a place and time where no one ever had to apologize for being a Democrat. In the 1990s — during the first term of Bill Clinton — I found myself disgusted by Clinton’s cruel betrayal of the loyalty of Democrats like me. Pandering to the “soccer mom” vote, Clinton signed into law the 1994 crime bill that included a ban on so-called “assault weapons” (certain semi-automatic rifles which were really not assault weapons at all). Never could I have imagined that a Democratic president, whom I had vocally supported in his 1992 campaign, would so casually infringe our Second Amendment rights. And buddy, that was it for me. My eyes were suddenly opened to the reality that the party to which I had given my loyalty did not reciprocate that loyalty. You don’t get a second chance to stab me in the back.
Getting ripped off, sold out and fucked over by Bill Clinton had a rather profound effect on my worldview. Mainly, it taught me to be deeply cynical about politics. People who claim to be our political “leaders” are all too often only in it for themselves — wealth, status, the aggrandizement of their own egos — and this is true also of most of the pundits and party operatives who cluster around politics. Does anyone believe that Reed Galen, John Weaver or any of the other scoundrels at The Lincoln Project are motivated by lofty ideals? Did any of that rotten #NeverTrump crew ever actually have any respect for Republican voters?
Well, I started writing this with a particular point in mind and see that I’ve digressed too far on that detour. My point is that our current crisis ought to teach conservatives a thing or two about why the Republican Party has been losing for so long. Democrats understand politics as an expression of power in a way that Republicans do not. Think back to the doomstruck debacle of 2008 John McCain campaign. Or think about the way the GOP establishment forced Mitt Romney down the throats of Republican primary voters. Good-bye to all that, and good riddance.
In 1998, the Lewinsky scandal threatened to destroy Bill Clinton’s presidency. The day the scandal broke, Clinton got a call in the White House from his former campaign adviser Dick Morris:
The consultant testified that he assured the President that “there’s a great capacity for forgiveness in this country, and you should consider tapping into it.”
“But what about the legal thing?” Morris says Clinton replied. “You know, Starr and perjury and all?” Clinton had already denied the affair in his Jones deposition, but, Morris says, the President admitted to him that “with this girl I just slipped up.”
Morris says he took a poll on the voters’ willingness to forgive confessed adultery. He phoned back a few hours later to tell Clinton that voters would forgive adultery “but not perjury or obstruction of justice.” In other words, it was already too late. Morris testified that Clinton said, “Well, we just have to win then.”
See my point? That backstabbing swindler knew what politics is really about. There are no participation trophies for second place in politics. You either win, or you go home. What we are facing, with three weeks to go until Election Day, is either victory or defeat. And you can be sure that if Democrats win, they will not be merciful toward their enemies. There will be no olive branches offered to their vanquished foes.
We shall be trampled down, trodden under, punished and humiliated in a vindictive partisan witch hunt against all the “deplorables” who prevented Hillary from becoming president. If Trump is defeated, there will be very little remaining hope that we can prevent Democrats from turning America into a one-party state, where opposition will be practically impossible, and dissent will be silenced. We can expect no assistance from the useful idiots who climbed aboard the Evan McMullin bandwagon four years ago. We are at coffin corner, my friends.
“Well, we just have to win then.”
Selah.
