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Winning with ‘No.’

From last week’s article on the growing awareness of Democratic corruption, by the always-interesting Jen Rubin:

…with the growth of government and the enormous amount of cash sloshing through Washington, the corruption problem is about to get worse. The stimulus money could, according to the FBI, be the breeding ground for its own crime wave. If the experts are right and 10% of the $787B stimulus plan will be lost to fraud and abuse, then $80B worth of graft and the congressmen, officials, lobbyists, and donors with their fingers in the pie will make fodder for plenty of headlines — just in time for the 2010 races.

No wonder the MSM is nervously sounding the alarm. There is the prospect that the age of “liberal dominance” could come screeching to a halt before it’s even gotten up to speed. Not only does it portend an electoral train wreck and loss of a governing liberal majority, but it sheds doubt on the notion that government was the knight in shining armor needed to ride to the rescue when the free market “failed.” If bigger and bigger government gets us more and more crooks and tens of billions in fraud, then maybe there is a better way to go than inflating the size and scope of the federal government.

One of the more common – and generally stupid, if amiable enough about it – memes out there is You can’t win elections without your own ideas. It’s a charming notion: almost as charming as the luminiferous aether, which is still a very romantic theory of physics. Alas, one inconvenient experiment destroyed it… and the same thing happened to the above meme in 2006, when the Democrats retook Congress on the original idea of “the GOP is evil, and we’re not.” Naturally, there are those out there who don’t want the GOP to do unto others as we were done unto, which is why we get a lot of people out there who want to give us ‘helpful’ advice (which is usually some variant of ‘adopt a liberal policy position that the populace at large isn’t buying’). But, no: we’re not Them works perfectly well as an organizing/motivational principle, particularly when “Them” is the political party currently busily engaged in racking up the National Debt in order to buy toys for its cronies.

I will undoubtedly now get a lot of pounding on the table and shouting in response – and the cleverer ones will not pound the table; they’ll just try to turn this into a debate, which it actually isn’t. And I’m under no particular obligation to pretend otherwise, so I shan’t.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

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COMMENTS

  • IJB

    I’ve been making exactly the same point later.

    The GOP can win with a simple “We’re not The Other Guy/The Other Guy’s messing up!/We’ll stop The Other Guy!!” message.

    And, considering the dearth of actually policy coming from the Party these days, it looks like that’ll have to do…

  • bk

    This health care bill could be the end of the line for Obama. The GOP needs to pound over and over again that people were promised that if they had coverage it wouldn’t change – except that it would cost a couple hundreds dollars a month left – and that if they didn’t have coverage they’d get it.

    Now we find out that not only will people NOT save a couple hundred bucks – they’re going to pay more … and get less care. And if they already had coverage that may go away, as Uncle Doctor Sam takes over. And 2/3 of people without coverage STILL won’t have coverage.

    Of the dozens of Obama broken promises, this is one that will resonate with people because it’ll hit them in their wallets in a measurable way.

  • reddog53

    But winning with” No, because there’s a better way and here it is” works a lot better.

    Reagan said No very effectively…but he had people’s support because he also showed what the other way was. The Contract for America was very definitely a ‘We’re not the other guys” message, attached to a specific and understandable list of better ways.

    “No, we’re not the other guys” leads to a ping pong match every 2-8 years with no traction or direction.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    Being the Party of ethics does not mean we have to play by Hoyle’s Rules when the other side does not. Go for blood, go for the throat. And whatever target presents itself, shoot it.

    And the truth here is exactly as you say: “Vote against the other guys” is a perfectly valid, real-world-tested strategy.

    The fact that we actually HAVE governing philosophies we want very badly to implement does not mean we have to present them, when bombing the Dems is such an effective tool.

  • Achance

    The Ds and MSM spent the whole time Republicans were in power hammering Rs for corruption and hypocrisy and we NEVER effectively responded nor did we do anything to the host of demonstrably corrupt Democrats.

    If a Republican gets accused on even the slimmest reed of evidence of corruption or sexual misconduct, the loudest screams for his head come from other Republicans. Democrats have a lot of experience with hypocrisy so they’re somewhat more reticent to start howling when they know that some in their midst might have done the same or worse. We’ve helped the Ds label us as corrupt and hypocritical by being so eager to kick our own to the curb while at the same time going along with them protecting their own, e.g., Cong. Jefferson.

    Unfortunately, we have two disadvantages: the Democrats used their forty odd years of virtually untrammelled power to make most of their corrupt practices facially legal and the Democrats’ constituencies really don’t much care about corruption or personal misdeeds, especially sexual misdeeds. They’ve managed to characterize the whole Republican Party as being comprised of fundamentalist Christians, so if any R is gay or has an eye for the PYTs, they fix the hypocrite label on him/her immediately.

    So, we need to do two things: stop helping the Democrats by kicking our own to the curb on the slightest allegation and stop letting the Ds off the hook; call them out on their corruption. The latter will have to be done at the state level in Republican controlled states because NOTHING a Democrat does is going to be illegal as long as Comrade Obama runs the DOJ. And, of course, I’d just like to close with a special thanks to all those here who helped Alaska get a new Democrat senator.

  • mom2oneson
  • izoneguy

    Lets just HOPE this CHANGE does not kill thousands of people in the process.

  • The_Gadfly

    Like the Washington Times suggest in their recent editorials? Who’d a thunk?

    Yeah, time to take the gloves off and start pounding them. Art makes some valid points above, but I think the first thing we need to change is letting donks off the hook. I’m willing to say wait and see on some of our guys, but I think the fact that we do send the bad people packing ought to be a point in our favor, not against us.

  • Uma Richie

    I’ll take the “no” but I’d be happier to see a Republican slate run on a platform of policies they would like to undo.

  • Finrod

    .

  • IJB
  • itrytobenice

    I think as we take this to the American people, it should always be phrased as $XXX.00 for every family in America. These billions and trillions just aren’t making sense. But when you say this waste has cost every family in America $1,000 this year alone, totaling $XXX, it makes it a little more personal.

    Make them see that *this* wasteful project would have paid for their gas for the whole month. Rinse, repeat.