Seeing the Enemy's Weakness

It's always easier to see your own difficulties than to see anyone else's, because they're so much bigger for you. More real. And when you're in a fight, it's easy to focus on every setback you face while over-emphasizing your enemy's strengths and attacks. Particularly when your enemy uses their own setbacks as reasons to double-down and hit harder. The fight always seems harder from your perspective.

And that's something that really bugs me when dealing with liberals when the chips are down. We're riding on top of the world, and then a few bad news days happen and I'm deluged with libs who insist that we're always losing, we deserve to lose, and it might be better for us in the long run if we lose. And when I try to argue how good things are for us and that we're not losing, I'm derided as naive and mocked for being an Obamabot because I think he's doing a good job.

And after it turns out I was right about everything, do I get any credit for it? No, they all slither back into the woodwork, awaiting the day when they can finally pull us into the wilderness.

An Independent Lot

And then you see things from the other side. Senator DeMint and Representative Bachmann had a conference call in which they complained about how difficult it is for conservatives. And that's a story I can understand, seeing as how the topic du jour is how Obama is going to create better healthcare and the best these freaks can do is lie about the plan. For as much as they're on the offensive on this particular issue right now, the entire debate is part of our offensive on them.

DeMint explained that conservative people are, by their nature, an independent-minded lot who value their personal freedom. "The Democrats have a different constituency," said DeMint. "The groups supporting them all want more centralized control at the federal level, whether it's energy or health care. So they have united, binding their grievances."

A few minutes later, Bachmann also chimed in on this theme. "The level of organization on the left is far superior to that on the right," she said. "But I would think that just as we saw a historic shift in the electorate last fall, we are seeing another historic shift, at Mach speeds, occurring in United States."

Of course, the "independent-minded" part of that is a laugh. As one commenter there joked, "Right - it is so much easier to organize blacks, latinos, gays, repro rights activists, etc than it is to organize southern, white men." Booyah.

The Losing Strategy

But overall, I can certainly understand why they think it's so hard. After all, they got trounced in the last two elections and don't have any real plan for getting back in the saddle. Meanwhile, all the libs calling us "losers" and attacking Dem leaders as being weak are just upset that we're not using our majorities to act the way that Republicans acted when they were in charge; as if that turned out great.

Of course, the Bush Powerhouse is vastly exaggerated by the liberal doom-mongers, which is all part of their "We Suck" campaign. Not only couldn't Republicans kill Medicare as they wanted; they gave it a drug plan! For as dangerous as the Bushies were, they had very few legislative accomplishments. That's a fact you'll rarely hear from these people. Bush had to rely on presidential fiat to screw things up, as his rubber-stamp Congress still couldn't get much done. Similarly, Nixon's foes thought he was still invincible right before he resigned. The one thing Republicans are good at is bluffing and appearing stronger than they are.

Yet, the Republican Congress seemed all-powerful to them, which means we're "losers" for not stiff-arming them at every turn. They feel that strategy is a sign of weakness and if you try to suggest that Obama has a strategy, you're a naive Obamabot with no credibility. And if he can't strong-arm the Blue Dog Dems and Centrists into supporting the strongest version of his plan, then he's a weak sell-out who doesn't deserve their support.

Always Bad News

And the worst part about this is how they sift through every news story looking for clues to prove that Obama has screwed up. And we saw that after the Republican Convention last year, when Palin helped McCain steal the news cycle and these people gnashed their teeth about how Obama needed to come out fighting because McCain was catching up. And here we are a year later and they're still demanding that Obama start fighting, forgetting that his strategy worked miracles that weren't possible by the rules they were using.

Because again, their problem isn't that he's not giving them the policies they want, but that he's not giving them the politics they want. They want the Fighting Jesus, not the Peaceful Jesus; and all this strategy and nuance is driving them batty. Perhaps that's why they remember the Clinton Era as being better than it was. He wasn't much of a liberal, but he sure gave them a helleva fight.

And so they insist that we always lose and Republicans always win; evidence to the contrary. And so it's nice to get a peek of the other side and see what they're worrying about. And sure, this isn't an easy fight we're in, but bullying Dems into following Obama will most assuredly backfire. And from a strategic standpoint, I would never trade our position for their's. I said that before we beat them in 2006, and our position is even stronger now. Not just because we have the majority, but because they've got nothing. The entire Conservative Movement was nothing but smoke & mirrors from the beginning, and the smoke clouded the mirrors up a long time ago.

We might have trouble passing the new Medicare into law, but remember, Republicans would much rather we be killing the old one. Even if the debate is tough, it's still on our turf. We shouldn't forget that. And for as much as Republicans want to do to Obama what they did to Clinton, Clinton still won re-election and will remain more popular than either of their last two presidents ever will. And I remain confident that things will turn out much better this time.