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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We Support Our GOP Troops. Then What?

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