Posted by
Andrews on Sunday, September 06, 2009 4:51:45 PM
I know my last few posts have been critical of the right, but they are intended not to be critical so much as they are to try to get us to focus. It seems since Obama was elected, the right has been so caught up in the many insanities proposed by his administration that they have spent all their time opposing proposal after proposal. Now, yes, Obama is a narcissistic egomaniac with no concept how the economy works, arrogant beyond belief and supported by a sycophantic media, but that gives us an opportunity to take back the congress in 2010 and the white house in 2012, and I don't want to see us blow it.
Take for instance the opposition to the curriculum circulated prior to Obama's speech. I was reading
a post about this event, and, while I cannot object to any of the author's characterization of the materials, I have to ask "why waste your time?" Yes, we should register our opposition to every bad idea, that goes without saying, but we do not need to do more that in many cases. If we confront every insanity with full-force resistance, we run the risk of being seen as opposing Obama solely out of partisanship. And at this time, what we need more than anything is to be seen as offering a principled, sensible alternative to Obama's insanely far-left agenda, and his ever-shifting priorities, as he "rebrands" his agenda to suit dropping poll numbers. We need to appear the clear alternative to his disturbing mix of doctrinaire socialism and Clinton-like opportunism*.
So, what to do? Well, as has been said before, we need to pick our fights. We can announce the reason we oppose whatever agenda he suggests, but we should not expend any political capital unless there is a serious threat. "Big ticket" items, such as health care reform, cap and trade, the stimulus, those are proper targets. Various petty acts of self-aggrandizement, various foolish foreign policy initiatives, bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia, and most especially bits of birther nonsense, those we should leave alone. We can only fight so many fights, so we should make sure they are fights that we can not only win, but that we must win. Fighting over trivialities, or for symbolic victories, just depletes our energy and makes us seem petty.
If we want to take back the government, we need to seem both principled and practical. And if we oppose absolutely everything, or waste our energy on pointless battles, then we will be seen to be neither. And if that happens, we deserve what we get.
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* This sounds absurd, but it really is Obama's position. He hopes to enact traditional far left programs, such as nationalized "single payer" health care, or the government management of GM, but once he realizes he lacks support for those positions, he often adopts a more centrist position, pushing for "public option" in health care, or calling the GM take over only temporary. Whether he is truly willing to accept the half-way step, or hopes in time to win the public over to his original plan is debatable. What matters is that the public impression he gives is a strange mix of doctrinaire leftist and opportunist with no firm beliefs. It is contradictory, but that is how he appears.