Campaign Update-Grouchy Historian Style

Well, tis the season of political punditry, and since I can usual remember what state I am in, unlike Joe Biden, I figure why not?  Let's talk about the state of the race.  Unlike the usual political pundits who want to talk about polls, focus groups, fund raising, blah, blah, blah. I figured I would use a different point of view....history.  (Duh, what did you think I would use).

Now when I try my hand at political commentary, I try to differentiate between what I know as fact, what I opine about, and what I don't know (yet).  When I wrote my post on the fallout from the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare (now more correctly called Obamatax) I got only one expected lefty comment.

Anonymous said...
This post is EXTREMELY offensive, and poorly researched. Thank you for generalizing all those that belong to the democratic party as "rats", for comparing President Obama to dictators such as Castro, Hitler, Il, and Stalin (common denominator? GENOCIDE! of course...), for wrongfully claiming president Bush has nothing to do with the current national debt, etc. Shameful.

Now like most leftys, Anonymous completely IGNORED what I was talking about.  I did not compare Comrade Obama to Castro, Hitler or Stalin...although I did imply he is a socialist redistributionist....which I OPINE he is.  I didn't even mention Obama's mishandling of the economy, but as usual, the left has to blame Bush for anything and everything.  And of course I was a meanie poopo head and called Democrats democRATS....darn, what an evil person I am.  I love how leftys seem to think American political history began on 1/20/2009 and completely forget the venom, treason, and absolutely hateful smack they threw at W and Darth Cheney for eight years.  WELL, this hommie don't play that.  You wanna call me names like sexist, homophobic, mysongist xenophobe, then I will call you a democRAT.  Get the hell over it, whiny twerps.  Oh, and to imply that I, the Grouchy Historian does not conduct incisive and extensive research ?!?!?  Hello...whatever, go back to mama's basement.
 ==================================
Okay, that felt better, switching to decaf now.
I thought it would be instructive to look at the current Presidential Campaign through the eyes of two of my favorite people....Clausewitz and Sun Tzu.  Hmmm, not political analysts, but two of the greatest military theoreticians in history?  YUP, that's correct...and that's why I like it.

Starting with my man Clausewitz...who famously said.."that war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political discourse, carried on with other means." I, of course, would extend that to say that politics is war and should be treated as such.  I am heartened to note the Romney campaign seems to know they are in a war and have avoided the obvious errors of the 2008 McCain campaign, like accepting Federal matching campaign funds, which nearly caused McCain to run out of money in October 2008.  And of course, unlike many Republicans, I think Romney ran a pretty good, if bare knuckle primary campaign, which I hope previews what he plans to do after the Republican convention.

Clausewitz goes on to say that "war is an act of force, and there is no logical limit to the application of that force."
There has never been a truer statement spoken about politics than that.  Clearly Obama and the democRATS will do ANYTHING, SAY ANYTHING and use whatever means they can to discredit Romney, trash Republicans and AVOID talking about Obama's record at all costs.  I mean seriously, we have $15 T in debt, 8% unemployment (really more like 15% if you go by the U6 numbers, which I do) and the entire Middle East going to the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda.  Why in the hell are we seriously talking about contraception, tax returns, and dog carriers on car roofs?  I love that Paul Ryan is sticking Obamacare right where it hurts...the $700B that is robbed from Medicare to pay for it...I mean seriously are America's senior citizens so brain-addled to think that even Obama could poop out the money to pay for Obamatax?  That money had to come from somewhere, and Grandma, that would be you.  So if Ryan can stay on message, keep sticking to the math and shred Biden in the debates, which shouldn't be too hard, then he may go down as the guy who gave Romney the election.

and finally, my newest favorite quote of Clausewitz "Obstinacy is a fault of temperament.  Stubbornness and intolerance of contradiction result from a special kind of egotism, which elevates above everything else the pleasure of its autonomous intellect to which others must bow.  It might also be called vanity, if it were not something superior:  vanity is content with appearance alone; obstinance demands the material reality."  

That is the best description of Obama I think I have ever read.  Obama really does BELIEVE his own nonsense about green energy, spreading the wealth and "you didn't build that."  If he was just another vain and egotistical politician, I could at least understand that...but Obama's a true believer in social re-distribution and "fundamentally transforming America."  Which is why I hope he goes back to Chicago in Jan 2013 and starts he speaking tour....or golf tour, whatever.

Now Sun Tzu is much more of a zen sort of thinker and offers more pithy political advice:
"Warfare is the way of deception."

Now this, of course, describes the Obama campaign's basic plan to a tee...divert, divert, divert as much attention as possible from the actual record of accomplishments...which consists of $1T in wasted stimulus money, $5T in new debt on less than 4 years, 15% unemployment, Medicare and Social Security going broke years earlier than they should, not to mention the coming conflagration in the Middle East.  Yup, let's keep talking about Romney's tax returns, free contraception, throwing Grandma off the cliff and Paul Ryan's abs.  Hopefully the Republicans will keep their laser focus on the economy, jobs and the coming Tax Armageddon that Obama is only too happy to spend trying to keep Obamacare afloat, pay benefits to all the new illegal immigrants he wants to give amnesty, and payoffs to blue states going bankrupt (don't kid yourself, he's gonna promise California that they're "too big to fail"...wait and see what happens if he gets reelected.)

and these little gems as well:

"Thus the highest realization of warfare is to attack the enemy's plans, next is to attack their alliances, next to attack their army and the lowest is to attack their fortified cities."

This should be the Romney-Ryan playbook...1) Take the Medicare issue from the democRATS and schwack them with it..over and over and over $700B is too big to hide and too hard to lie and deny.  2)  Keep winning over traditional unions...the coal miners are already sitting out...how about all those union workers who should be building the Keystone pipeline, or working on those offshore oil rigs....3) Attack the army of brain-dead youth voters who may be waking up to fact that they're about to get screwed to the wall by Obamacare and the destruction of what remains of Social Security and Medicare...oh, and there's that crappy job market and those pesky student loans.  

So there it is...my opinion of how things are going...for now...can't wait to see the Republican convention....

Comments

Joe said…
Excellent post. So many people miss the substance of the issues and don't bother to get down to the ideology behind them. I have even started reading that Obama and Romney are the same, that they are both right-leaning fiscally but left and right, respectively, in their social approach. Of course, they don't realize that for Obama, his social agenda is his economic agenda, rendering such trite equivocations useless.

Again, well done.
Cynthia said…
Nicely done.