Saul Alinsky and the 2013 Budget Fight
Saul Alinsky's Ninth Rule for Radicals is that "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself," the point of which is to say there is a lot you can do to defeat your opponent mentally and vise versa. In fact, Sun Tzu said "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting" but that if you must fight, you should leverage your opponent's psychology to your advantage. "Appear weak when you are strong and strong when you are weak," he said.
This principle is evident even in one on one combat. In boxing for example, fighters try to break their opponent's wills before the fight even begins by delivering a deadly cold stare, sending chills down their opponent's spines.
We can see this tactic at work today more than at any time in recent political history in America. These days, Obama has Republicans in such fear that they unapologetically skip the fight and go straight to declaring defeat.
In their defense, Obama's string of successes has defied rationality. In 2008, he was perhaps the least experienced candidate to ever win the presidency. He came from a radical background, yet received practically no vetting whatsoever from the mainstream media. The whole scene was unlike anything in modern American history, with the extraordinarily large, euphoric, and delusional masses under the spell of a demagogue.
A totally unsuspecting American public fell victim to the unprecedented assault of every third-world populist tactic in the playbook, e.g. class warfare, racism, sexism, idolatry and so on. By and large, America had no experience with this and therefore had no basis by which to know this was happening and to therefore reject it on its demerits. However, if you ask an immigrant from Cuba or a former Soviet Satellite state, they recognized and rejected Obama for what he was right away.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media reinforced the Obama narrative and when events occurred or information was somehow revealed which contradicted that narrative, you would likely never know the contradiction had ever existed -- the same as in third-world countries.
Then, leading up to 2012, Obama applied the process in reverse, following Sun Tzu's advice to appear weak when you are strong. Right up until hours before Ohio's general election numbers came in, Republicans had been optimistic of an election victory. They had been lulled into a false sense of comfort, thinking that no president could be re-elected with Obama's record. Little did they know how powerful Obama's ground was or that Obama's IRS had been obstructing Tea Party groups for the previous two years.
The election sent Republicans reeling and a permanent sense of defeatism took hold. Republicans figured that Obama could break the law, make bad policy, and demagogue every issue by blaming problems he created on the racists, the wealthy, the sexists, and generally speaking the Republicans. That the media wouldn't report the truth was a given. In short, the Republicans have already been defeated psychologically and might as well just resign their offices.
Now they plan on winning by conceding that they're losers, merely surviving and offering up candidates who, while in their minds may actually be electorally successful, would in reality again be another success for liberal policies formally flying under the Republican banner.
But a few events have provided rays of hope, with little thanks to the Republicans. Grassroots activists took back the house in 2010. Additionally, the House went through with the sequester, despite the shameless demagoguery which revealed Obama to have the soul of a petty third-world tyrant. And we fought Obama's gun grab attempts and won.
Republicans are in a bad position. They have already conceded the worst possible outcome for a 2013 budget battle with Obama and are therefore surrendering to the biggest defeat of all, the implementation of enormous socialist policy. Meanwhile, they continue to underestimate their base, not to mention the overall public dissatisfaction with ObamaCare.
So Obama has already defeated the Republicans. He has his ill-gotten policy and the compliance of the so called opposition party. Striving for victory could hardly be worse than this. The one remaining defeat which they appear to fear is the electoral defeat of another big government Republican. Even when we won with a big government Republican, we ended up with massive deficits, ill-thought out wars and ultimately Obama himself.
In reality, Republican losses are more likely to materialize in the form of a large turnover within the legislature at the hands of dissatisfied and angry grassroots conservatives. The Republicans that don't fight this will likely be removed and soon forgotten. However, if they fight, they might actually be identifiable as a principled and attractive alternative to Obama among the public. They will inspire the enthusiastic support of the grassroots and maybe even shatter the façade of the invincible demagogue who us currently being invalidated by years of false promises, lies, and scandals.
So take comfort in the fact that the threat is likely not as bad as you think it is. ...and fight.