“I don’t want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position.”
When George C. Scott General George S. Patton said that to the Third Army, he did those brave Americans a great service. He warned them of the imminent doom and the very stripping of purpose that come with achieving the ugly status of stasis. It is that moment when poor leadership casts a quilted pall of doubt and frustration over the best that a nation can produce. Progress halts. The pure aether normally breathed into the lungs of victors becomes polluted and ungratifying. This is when equilibrium is found in its worst form.
That is precisely the message that I want to stress to the current Republican leadership. There has been a flood of bad equilibrium over the last few decades, and its badness always materializes in the forms of both intra- and inter-party equilibrium. This becomes a double-edged guillotine blade for our side. If it doesn’t get you on the down stroke, it’ll “catch you on the rebound.”
First, let’s take a good look at intra-party equilibrium. This is when the deep state within the Republican party acts as both an engine and a backup generator all dedicated to maintaining status quo. In this glorious effort, nothing really gets done. There’a a lot of glad-handing and feel good moments; however, no one is moving the front lines and pushing into enemy territory. The impresarios of this paradigm are many – too many, in fact – and mostly take the form of effete, low energy pods such as Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, Jeff Flake, et al. Then, during those golden opportunities when the iron is glowing and begging to be struck and formed, the irresolute noodleheads holding the hammer never swing. This occurred an embarrassing number of times during the G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, G.W. Bush, and Obama years. In short, if the people we’d elected had actually performed at the moment of truth, we would have lower taxes, adequate military funding, far fewer feel good social programs, and we would never have had Obamacare or people with the same parts introducing each other as husband and – I mean wife and – er, whatever.
“All right, now we know what we’re up against.” Well, when Dr. Rumack made that revelation in the movie Airplane!, he was talking about the poison being bad fish. In the case of the Republican party, the poison has been dilly-filled, dally-coated moderation. Consequently, this has laid the foundation for compounding the bad equilibrium that has plagued us in the past. At some point, the RINO’s started expanding that cold slab in every direction but up, thus creating inter-party equilibrium. This underfoot monument to self-sterilization gained enough acreage by the run-up to the 2016 presidential race that it was visible from orbit. The RINO’s had so striven to have so much in common with the other side of the aisle, and to be so staid and so cool, and to be such eager apologists instead of indefatigable standard bearers, that the Republican Party was on its way to becoming nearly indistinguishable from the Democrats. There is nothing laudable about “holding our position” and staring eye-to-eye across no man’s land at the other guys. Had no one on our side ever heard of the concept of taking the high ground, then bearing down on the opposition below as we gain the momentum to take the next hill, and the next?
Some did, and now they have a voice – as well as a coach, quarterback, and offensive line. Donald Trump is an amalgam of all of those things. But more importantly, he’s acting as the ultimate force multiplier by teaching the willing in our party how to fill those positions themselves. It happens to be working. People are realizing that equilibrium is great for physiology but bad for moving the country in the right direction. Conservatives are gaining ground because some on our team are embracing Patton’s words: “…because the very thought of losing is hateful – to Americans.” We just need to pick up the pace a little.
In closing, just imagine for a moment if what likely was our last best chance to make America great again had not been nominated and elected. Or try to imagine someone like John Kasich foolishly trying to be a gentleman in a debate with Hillary Clinton while she mercilessly used her broomstick to beat and sweep him into the nearest catch basin. (The sad part is that it would have been done to him by a horrible candidate.) What would our party have looked like then? I’ll try to paint a picture of one possibility. Conservatives would dutifully have continued the fight as the Maquis while the RINO’s would have become the collaborators. Things would not exactly have been looking up. And this time there would not have been a USA to save the freedom fighters because, well, you can figure it out.
