Strategic Withdrawal
Kim du Toit
February 27, 2008
6:34 AM CDT
From Reader Ubuntu in Comments to this post:
A person more concerned for practice will vote for the lesser evil, if they think it will delay the inevitable long enough to allow them some freedom before the walls fall down. A person of principle realizes that, while that practical vote may delay the inevitable for a short while its not going to fix things, and will lead to an even bigger mess needing to be pulled out of later on.
I see. So voting in favor of state-issued CCW permits was a bad thing, because it allowed the state to identify some gun owners, or it “licensed” gun owners, or however the idealists might put it.
Had we voted against that 2A compromise, we’d have got sweet nothing.
Instead, that apparent compromise on our Second Amendment rights has allowed people to be able to defend themselves outside their homes, showed the GFWs (and people who might have believed their nonsense) that the “blood in the streets” scenario was total bullshit, and has opened the door to “Vermont-style” (un-licensed) carry in one state (Alaska), and various initiatives for the same in other states.
Wow… that compromise really sucked, didn’t it?
There’s a military maneuver called a “strategic withdrawal”, that allows a defender to give up ground to buy time, to marshal their forces, and to recruit others to their cause. It is as hallowed and successful a maneuver as the “to the last man” defense, and has been even more successful than the latter, on occasion.
That’s what we conservative are doing now: buying time, backpedaling now so we can come back stronger later.
McCain in the White House: Lousy, horrible, foul; but giving us a chance to fight another day, perhaps.
Hillobama in the White House: Catastrophic, from Day One.
And if anyone thinks that conservatives are going to allow McCain to go nutso on us when he gets into the Oval Office, they can think again. If I have to send daily letters to my Congresscritters to keep his feet to the fire, I will; and I’ll threaten all kinds of electoral firestorms for them if they go along with his “maverick” bullshit. (Yeah, Sen. Hutchison, I’m talking to you. My House paisan is safe—Rep. Sam Johnson is more conservative than I am—and Sen. Cornyn is about 80% on the side of the conservative angels.)
If Hillobama is in the Oval Office, I (and all other conservatives) might as well be pissing into the wind.
Lemme tell you, we lived in Chicago with a Commie bitch House Rep (Comrade Jan Schakowski), and it was one of the main reasons we fled to Texas. Only people who live or have lived in the various Peoples’ Soviets (CA, MA, IL etc) can know how bad it is to complain to your Congressional representatives, and be totally and utterly ignored, 100% of the time. It would be orders of magnitude worse if that happened at the Federal level.
McCain will have to listen to Congress if he wants to get anything done—and as long as we can perhaps recapture the House and keep the Senate honest, we have a fighting chance. Conservatives staying home on Election Day 2008 will achieve nothing except hand the whole thing to the Socialists.
And forget that childish “reset button” nonsense. It’s not gonna happen again in this country, in several lifetimes if at all. “The Glorious Day” is not inevitable, it’s not even likely, and the sooner we forget about any magic red “Easy” buttons and Red Dawn fantasies, and start actually working instead of whining, the easier it will be to reverse this train.
The only way to win this thing back from the Socialists is to grind and grind and grind away at the Socialists, forever. They’re never going to quit—and so we cannot.
One of the reasons that the Socialists have been getting their asses handed to them in Presidential elections is because their loony Left refuses to compromise, and drags the party ever-leftward. The only time the Socialists won—and even then, mostly because conservatives voted for a “third-party” candidate—was when they sent a “moderate” candidate (BJ Boy) to represent them in the polls. Otherwise, it’s been liberal after liberal (Humphrey, Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry) going down in flames.
I wish that we had a real “moderate” for a candidate—anyone but McCain—because then we’d be having fewer of these arguments amongst ourselves. But our choices were lousy from the start, so we’re stuck with this bastard, like it or not.
But unless we want to see the High Taxes / Gun Control / Big Government / Surrender Party in power, we need to grow up, get serious and stop them getting into power first, before we start trying to work on McCain.
That’s the beginning and the end of it.
