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Watching the Republican pushback against the Obama Administration and its state-level allies since they took office in January — and seeing up close some of these first skirmishes in what will be a very long political war, we are struck by how many establishment Republicans still continue to believe that these largely legislative battles represent some kind of ordinary struggle between the parties. In a few years, they believe the pendulum will swing the other way, and most important matters can be put to right.

The American Thinker, however, has been in the forefront of non-herd conservative analysis of the Obama Threat.  Today Paul Shlichta in his “How He Did It: A Diagrammatic Analysis of the Obama Campaign” writes –

“Like the spear-carrying soldiers of Ethiopia, overwhelmed by Mussolini’s tanks and poison gas in 1936, the Republicans simply don’t know what hit them in last year’s election. Some felt that they had conducted an old-fashioned 20th century campaign while Obama mounted the first truly information-age 21st century political blitzkrieg. Others blame the blatant media bias, the race issue, or the unprecedented scale of fund raising and spending.

The first month of Obama’s regime has provoked a similar bewilderment. A dazed Congress hastily authorized a huge document, filled with hidden booby traps like RAT, that none of them had actually read, let alone comprehended. Republicans are now cowering in corners, wondering what atrocity will come next.”

Readers are encouraged to visit Schlichta’s ‘diagrammatic analysis’ here to get a sense of the scope of the Obama operation. 

Last October, Victor Volsky in his American Thinker post entitled “Enough Already!” wrote about the self-deluding attitude of some conservatives about the traditional media –

“I have just about had it with the conservative punditry and their plaintive wailings about the unfairness of the self-proclaimed ‘mainstream media’ (I think the designation ‘Big Media’ would be more appropriate as applied to the information service of the leftist elites, which is anything but mainstream).”
. . . . . . . . . .
“Hope springs eternal in the conservative breast that we are on the verge of an imminent breakthrough: just one more fact laid out, just one more liberal smear blown out of the water  and the scales will fall off the liberal journalists’ eyes. They will see the light and embark upon the path of righteousness and objectivity. This hope is as baseless as it is stupid — akin to blowing one’s lunch money on lottery tickets in the fervent belief that this time, finally, one will hit the jackpot.

One might argue that such misplaced faith in the Big Media’s good intentions is innocuous and makes no real difference in the larger scheme of things. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Wishful thinking and willful blindness disarm, disorient and debilitate the fighter who needs to marshal all his resources for the coming battle. If he is to climb into the ring in peak form, clear-eyed appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent is paramount. Instead, he lulls himself to sleep with false hope.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

Read all of Volsky’s post here.

What then is to be done?  Certainly the conservative members of the House Republican leadership have so far been able to keep their flock singing from the same hymnal on the Obama proposals.  On the Senate side, conservatives like Jim DeMint and Jim Inhofe together with other stalwarts are fighting the good fight.  (Serious questions have been raised, however, about the Senate Republican leadership.  One also wonders whether the Republican leadership made full use of the Senate rules to slow down the stimulus package so that greater public awareness and opposition to that dangerous measure could have developed.) Republican governors too have weighed in — questioning the Obama stimulus package. 

The Obama Allies: But just as in Washington, D. C. and the capital area, on a state level an informal but effective network of policy centers, augmented by so-called environmental activists here and here, and taxpayer-supported voices from public-school systems to academic institutions including departments of ‘education’ all echo the same policy themes. So do groups speaking for illegal immigrants, housing ‘advocates,’ ‘liberal’ churches. Anyone in the traditional media who wants to get ahead professionally will also have to sing many of the same songs. These advocates work to advance what are inarguably collectivist national and local governments as well as citizen disarmament.  (On a national level, they also work toward what will amount to US military disarmament, and a dangerous dilution of our sovereignty.)

In our view, the Maryland and Virginia Republican parties have to make up their minds what they believe, with some specificity, in terms of the established conservative coalition model of fiscal and values voices working together.  And how about homeland defense?  And illegal immigration, and assimilation?  How about the curricula of public schools pushing a ‘green’ policy agenda? How about charter schools? If we keep losing on the education of our children, tactical fiscal victories won’t count for much.

In Maryland, many Republican legislators (and some Democrat lawmakers) strongly support denying drivers’ licenses to illegals by requiring proof of lawful presence in accordance with the Real ID Act.  In a bizarre twist of circumstances, some Virginia Republican legislators pushed legislation here against REAL ID here and here. Perhaps because they had had first hand experience in a ’sanctuary state,’ Maryland legislators were able to differentiate between real (a continuing influx of illegals) and fantasy (a supposed ‘giant federal database’) perils.

In Maryland, on the other hand, we learn that Party sachems asked the Lollar Commission, perhaps the Republican Party’s one hopeful fiscal initiative, to curtail its outreach and concentrate on ‘research.’

The new websites for Republican legislators’ caucuses in Maryland and Virginia are fine and dandy, but they have yet to present a coherent low-tax, limited-spending, pro-prosperity and pro-values vision. 

If the two Republican state parties want to reach out to independents and disaffected Republicans, they need to earn their trust as we just explained here about fiscal matters in Maryland. And conservatives need to build, yesterday, the same kind of informal local networks as the Left. 

But the Left has one advantage on the state level over the two state Republican parties:  they generally know exactly what they stand for, and have a well crafted road map to where they want to go.

 

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