Over the last eight years, the Left has taken the offensive continually while Republicans either capitulated, cooperated, procrastinated, or employed purely defensive maneuvers that amounted to a finger in the dam.

How things have changed.

It’s been barely two weeks since Donald Trump has taken office and Democrats are facing a political blitzkrieg. They are grappling for the means to handle the assault, as the party of the Left has long thought it had total control of both the narrative and the battles.

Stunned political operatives like Nancy Pelosi don’t recognize President Trump is not interested in guerilla warfare tactics, but has put into effect a broad-based offensive against the very citadels of liberal power and bloated government.

The president is putting into play a classic military maneuver applied to politics: keep going on a total and accelerated offensive no matter what in order to keep your enemy digging foxholes and putting up barriers -- while all the while they actually are being forced to slowly retreat under the onslaught, screaming and holding up protest placards all the way to the back of the line.

Democrats are unused to a total war offensive, as they have relied on relentless guerilla warfare and the long march. They are even more unused to being on the defensive, and are ill-prepared to fight defensively. They are aghast over the Trump tactics being applied against them, are assuming the old weapons once applied so effectively against their political enemies still work.

One is reminded of the French infantry fighting in World War I. “Elan,” which was a mystical sense of inevitable victory, was supposed to be enough to win the day. The result was that French soldiers were woefully unprepared for German machine guns. Guns did not take “elan” into account.

In like manner, Democrats are still hauling out old and worn out tropes from the 1960s, weapons that won victories and intimidated the opposition for two generations. But the old tactics are obsolete and increasingly prove to be virtually useless. Millions of Americans have repudiated the orthodox liturgy of the Left, wedded as it is to constant and relentless battles about race, diversity, open borders, and globalism. Millions are also sick and tired of being labeled heretics by radical Democrats who constantly dismiss decent and basically charitable Americans as haters, homophobes, misogynists, and bitter clingers to “guns and religion.”

Not many Democrats realize the most powerful weapon they have employed over the last two generations; namely the mainstream media, is now as obsolete as the Maginot Line. For decades, the Left’s Maginot Line has had its guns pointed in one direction -- against those who have opposed liberalism’s excesses and who have and still are resisting its long march through major American institutions -- citadels such as academia and the Church.

But liberals badly miscalculated by underestimating Trump, (along with, at times, the author of this article, who has gradually changed her mind). Like the Germans who simply went around the Maginot Line, Trump has simply gone around and over the fortifications built by leftist media outlets.

In so doing, Trump has effectively neutered the fourth arm of the government. The Left can no longer rely on the mainstream media as a powerful weapon, as due to new technology and the internet, it is becoming as archaic as Big Bertha in the face of the development and implementation of missiles.

Trump correctly discerned that ordinary citizens who desire nothing more than to be left alone to enjoy peace and while at an actual job or sitting by their undisturbed hearths are sick to death of constantly being roiled by the incessant demands of the latest approved victim of the month. They are fed up with the constant assaults on authority and on their faith. For them, the old tactics from radicals’ playbooks dating from the 1960s have become merely irritating and meaningless liturgical chants rather than urgent and legitimate calls for justice.

The fact is that millions of Americans do not want the fundamental transformation desired by the Left. They want an America transformed by fundamentals -- the fundamentals that have been and still are the bedrock of American society; namely, constitutional law and adherence to the Bill of Rights.

At the heart of the Trump political blitzkrieg is the core belief that America has been going down the wrong path for many years and that it is urgent that the ship of state be turned around before it sinks into the vortex created by extremists.  

The battle in America is the same battle that is being fought in Europe and around the world. Will it be the ideology of the radical Left that prevails? Will globalists prevail or will the legitimacy of national identities endure? Will a monoculture of the Left be established or will peoples of the world be free to be truly diverse in thought, word, and deed? Will international law trump national sovereignty or will Americans and citizens of other free nations retain their unique and indelible character as formed by founding documents, history and traditions?

It seems that for Trump, the time is now or never. It appears he is willing and able to go after the citadels of power that have weakened America and her foundational beliefs, he not inclined to take the George McClellan way of battle -- endlessly organizing and rehearsing battle maneuvers, studying textbook battles while preparing for attacks by erecting ineffectual bulwarks. Instead he seems more inclined to the tactics of William Tecumseh Sherman -- as applied to political war.

That is perhaps why he picked John Gorsuch, who is the judicial equivalent of General Robert E. Lee, for a position on the Supreme Court. Gorsuch has signaled he is not prepared to adjudicate on the bases of mystical penumbras, from anti-science argumentations, and from mere hunches or intuitions like those of a “wise Latina.” Gorsuch shares the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s dedication to the interpretation of laws based on the actual text.

He has stated: “Judges should instead strive, if humanly and so imperfectly, to apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, and looking to text, structure, and history to decide what a reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would have understood the law to be.”

Further, Gorsuch believes the Constitution should be interpreted as America’s Founders intended, not used as a vehicle for ever changing and fluid “fundamental transformation.”

The responses of Democrats have been predictable, old school radical, boring and outdated. Already they are characterizing Gorsuch’s stances as not being “mainstream.” No sooner was Gorsuch’s name announced than a group of protestors appeared carrying professionally printed signs calling him “extreme” and “dangerous.”  

Yes, there is nothing quite as convincing as a “spontaneous” uprising from people who are probably hirelings. We have seen such “spur-of-the-moment” outrages many times. The extemporaneity of the Left is always so compelling.

The truth is that their weapons are outdated will prove futile in the long run.

However, it is still wise to put on helmets when engaged in guerilla warfare and facing sniper fire. There are still many battles to be fought, though it might appear liberalism is in the position of Custer during his last stand.

But due to Trump’s broad front against the excesses of liberalism and the tacit complicity of some with leftist goals, at least conservatives are on the offensive and conducting total warfare for the first time in a very long time.

Fay Voshell is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. Her thoughts have appeared in numerous online magazines, including Fox News, CNS, RealClearReligion, and National Review. She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com