…we (‘we’ being the GOP) will probably be more or less given the Presidency by the American electorate. This bald statement will annoy, amuse, bemuse, confuse, enrage, and/or challenge a goodly number of my colleagues, readers, and/or lurkers, regardless of partisan identity: when it comes to the dueling visions of history, virtually the entire political blogosphere seems to have signed off on the Great Man theory. And there are, perhaps and forgive me for saying this, personal reasons for some to feel this way.
For example, the thought that maybe Barack Obama didn’t win the election in 2008 because he was just that devastatingly powerful is, in its way, equally subversive to both the Left and the Right’s narrative. Many on the Left don’t want to hear that they picked to lead them a schlub who can’t run the government, and many on the Right don’t want to hear that they lost to one. but he is, and he can’t, and by 2016 the electorate will be as tired of seeing his face and the people that he hangs with as the 2008 electorate was of seeing Bush’s face and the people that he hung out with*.
I say all of this not to lull the Right into a false sense of security; quite the opposite, really. One of the problems of assuming that you’re always going to lose is that it doesn’t prepare you for what happens when you actually do win, somehow. The Right’s grassroots and activists need to start thinking of what they’re going to do with the political power that will be dropped into their collective lap, because it’s probably going to happen sooner than they think.
What? Sure, OK, we’re all doomed and nobody’s going to do anything of the sort and the heat death of the universe is coming to claim us all. Fine. Humor me, then.
Moe Lane
PS: Yes, yes, “defund Obamacare,” thanks, I knew that already. How? What’s your budget? Please show me the checklist and critical path. And yes, the parts of this that can be done now should be done now.
*This would be the point where someone will go A-ha! You thought that Romney was going to win in 2012, you stupidhead Moe, you. Yup! I did. Just like most Democrats thought at the time that Kerry was going to win in 2004… or, for that matter, managed to keep themselves believing until quite late in 2010 that they weren’t really going to lose the House. Or thought that the Wisconsin recalls were going to actually accomplish anything except permanently weaken Big Labor. I mention all of this not from sheer sadism (that’s merely a fun by-product), but to note that most of the people who got all of that wrong will still brag about getting 2008/2012 right. So I shall reserve for myself the right of ignoring the peanut gallery; oh, wait, that’s the sheer sadism again…
What good it will do for the GOP to win the presidency remains to be seen. If the (notional) GOP president is indistinguishable on policy from the democrat, then the democrats win, anyway. I am not hopeful in that regard, based on the last two GOP nominees……..
Oh, yeah, one more thing, if anybody from the GOP leadership happens to be reading this: if all you’re going to offer us is a marginal/strong> improvement over Obama, well, by default, so will the democrats…..
Crap, I hate screwing up the formatting with no way to fix it…. :/
Grassroots and activists need to internalize this, but hopefully the party leadership won’t. Because there’s going to be significant push against voting for the leftmost viable primary candidate in the general. They need to understand that we tried that the last two elections, in this one, where it ought to almost be a gimme, we need an actual conservative. Otherwise there _will_ be a third party candidate and you can say hello to First Husband Bill.
Well, Skip .. may I suggest that step 1 should be “knock the self-selected party leadership over the head, dress them in a gorilla costume, and air freight them to Buenos Aires” ?
.
Mew
Can we make that female gorilla suits, and include a real silverback on that flight? Then maybe they would arrive in Buenos Aires with some idea of what it’s like for the rank and file of the GOP………
We need to find a way to keep the media from selecting our presidential candidate. Should we decline invitations from CNN and NBC to host debates? RNC plans on fewer of them so maybe we need to put pressure on RNC to exclude previous moderator(s) with leftist leanings (Oh,never mind they all tilt leftward).