Don Griffin – At the national level, bipartisan civility has given way to guerrilla politics. The protracted divide among elected officials has caused the memory of cooperation for the common good of America to slip quietly into the shadows. Taking its place is an electorate directed by an extreme polarization in party leadership.
The goal of the left is the retention and achievement of more political power while the right strives to keep the campaign promises made by Donald Trump. The political process has stalled, maybe fully fractured, and the message being received by voters is “the citizenry be damned.”
President Trump promised to ‘Make America Great Again’ and has delivered on that promise, much to the dismay of the Democrats. His achievements have essentially eliminated the ability of the left to cast a worthwhile platform for the 2020 election. Even those voters supporting the left who are only casually familiar with the political landscape know that the outrageous promises by the cast of presidential hopefuls cannot possibly be funded.
Dangling “free stuff,” a widely used tactic of the Obama administration, is quickly losing its luster. In its place the Democratic strategists have created a new approach by combining two playbooks – Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and the 6th-century B.C. book by Chinese general Sun Tzu, The Art of War. What has evolved with this combination is a form of guerrilla politics never before seen in our country’s political history.
President Trump is cast by his opponents as favoring the rich, the elite, and the privileged white male, which automatically results in the poor, the working class, and the underprivileged minority being labeled as the “victim” — this is classic Alinsky. The guerrilla element started even before Trump was elected and has continued for the last three years.
General Sun instructed his followers to use small and fast-moving units to launch repeated surprise “hit-and-run” attacks. These attacks, as currently deployed by the Democrats, are a constant barrage of false accusations, such as the Russian collusion and the quid pro quo with Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelensky.
The charges against Trump need not be true, but they do need to be overlapping and unending. The “guerrillas” attack his family, his nominees (Gorsuch and Kavanaugh), or members of his administration (Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Sanders, et. al.). They attack using false accusations as a direct counter against President Trump’s effective use of Twitter.
Nancy Pelosi expressed the strategy clearly in a press conference. Tell a lie to the media. Let the media run with it. Cite the media later as truth. A very effective but disingenuous means of convincing the masses that Trump is an ogre.
But the guerrilla tactic of pressing for impeachment of the President may have exposed a chink in their armor. This strategy has polarized the electorate, with the Democrats favoring the move and the Republicans solidly against it, both already knowing which lever they will pull next November.
Speaker Pelosi doesn’t want a formal impeachment vote taken in the House for several reasons. She may not have the votes needed to move the proceedings forward and she knows a formal vote gives the Republicans options that might prove embarrassing to the Democrats, since much of what’s being charged against President Trump has been dismissed as an unfounded witch-hunt. She also is an excellent tactician who knows that she can bend the rules without a formal vote and continue the endless charade against Trump, all of which keeps the lies streaming and the media churning.
It’s the large group of independents that will eventually turn on the left. Pelosi may have underestimated the independent voters, who are watching with interest. If the Democrats attempt to make a false case for impeachment, they will pay the price next November since “fairness” still carries a lot of weight with voters, no matter who the candidates are.
Che Guevara, the infamous Cuban guerrilla fighter, gave this famous response when asked why he and his men fight. “Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery.”
The left may have jumped the gun in choosing guerrilla politics as a strategy. If the Democrats look around, they are the only ones suffering ignominy and, ironically, it’s causing them significant misery because Trump’s strategies are working and the American people are winning. Those of us on the right watching all this are convinced that political karma is a beautiful thing.
SF Source The American Thinker Oct 2019