We Support Our Gop Troops Then What - Road to the Middle Class

THOSE FAINT hearts who have already given up the 2006 mid-term election as lost have been rightly chastised. Our stalwart conservative talk-show hosts are rousing the troops to action, and until the election is over, the watchword is: This Day We Fight!

But there is no shame in admitting that the Republican Party is overextended and likely to suffer defeat next week on November 7. What comes after the battle is crucial, for the period after a battle, in victory or in defeat, is usually squandered.

After victory, the pursuit usually fails to exploit the opportunity to turn success into rout, and after defeat demoralization and disorganization typically result in a disastrous loss in materiel and a reduction in the fighting effectiveness of the army.

The most important skill of a leader may well be the ability to conduct a retreat in good order, preserving the army complete and ready to fight another day. To understand the truth of this we need only look at the Democrats, who since the defeat of 1994 have refused to admit that they needed to retreat and regroup. Instead they have adopted a politics of obstruction, utterly refusing to compromise on sensible Republican reforms of the welfare state. This, I believe, will prove to be a mistake, as I wrote in �Know When to Fold �Em.�

However tired we may be, with Peggy Noonan, of President Bush we can say this of him. Unlike President Nixon, who neglected the Republican Party for his own Committee to Re-elect the President, and President Reagan, whose party-building had mixed reviews, President Bush has excelled at party building. It was party-building that won the 2004 election. The Democratic presidential vote increased by 16 percent in 2004 over 2000, but the Republican vote increased 23 percent, thanks to the Republican ground game.

And then there is the power of talk radio. Listen to a loyal Democrat, Camille Paglia:

The overblown fear of Fox News is such a sentimentality on the part of too many Democrats. Talk radio is infinitely more powerful than Fox. Radio hosts are blanketing the country with round-the-clock conservative ideology... creating programs that millions of people want to listen to.

So conservatives have a first-rate political machine. Thank you, talk radio; thank you Karl Rove; thank you Ken Mehlman; thank you everyone who works so hard on the ground game.

Our problem is that in 50-50 America every political issue turns into a World War I battle of attrition. A huge frontal attack is needed to conquer a few square miles of territory. We don�t want to use up our fine conservative troops in a war of attrition with the Democrats. No battle of the Somme for us, thank you.

So if things do not go well in November Republicans should not be afraid to execute a strategic retreat and lure the Democrats out of their welfare state trenches. Then we can engage them in a war of maneuver.

Although Democrats are ruthless at defending their pensions and their sinecures, the privileges of a century of the welfare state, they are tired of garrison life. They want to go on a crusade, a crusade to Save the Planet from Global Warming.

You see, we are living in the End Times, with Greenland glaciers calving monster icebergs and threatening another Flood. The answer is Sacrifice. We must cut back on carbon use, curb our wasteful use of personal vehicles, and generate electricity from eco-friendly renewable resources. If you think all this talk about End Times, Salvation, Floods, and Sacrifice sounds very like a religion, read �Eco-Sacrifice is Closer Than You Think.�

While liberals are competing to be altar boys at the High Mass, Kyoto Rite, their welfare state is going down the tubes. Liberals seem to worry more about the half-life of highly toxic radioactive waste than about the waste of childhood in dumbed-down public schools. Could it be that aborti-philic childless liberals don�t care about kids?

Here�s the plan. While the liberals are off on their crusade to Save the Planet from Global Warming, a revived Republican Party swoops down upon the bureaucrats that the liberals left behind to run the welfare state for them.

How about riling up a new political category, Education Moms, to get up off the heated seats of their SUVs and demand choice and accountability in education for their children?

For instance: why is it that year after year high-school kids need remedial math and English at college? Don�t our high-school teachers care about kids? Don�t they care enough to do something when there�s a problem staring them in the face?

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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