The Cold And Brutal Truth

This past Saturday [27 February 2010], over at The Corner, Andrew McCarthy voiced the cold and brutal truth that so many on the Right don’t want to hear or believe:

…I think our side is analyzing this all wrong: Today’s Democrats are controlled by the radical Left, and it is more important to them to execute the permanent transformation of American society than it is to win the upcoming election cycles. They have already factored in losing in November — even losing big. For them, winning big now outweighs that. I think they’re right.

I hear Republicans getting giddy over the fact that “reconciliation,” if it comes to that, is a huge political loser. That’s the wrong way to look at it. The Democratic leadership has already internalized the inevitability of taking its political lumps. That makes reconciliation truly scary. Since the Dems know they will have to ram this monstrosity through, they figure it might as well be as monstrous as they can get wavering Democrats to go along with. Clipping the leadership’s statist ambitions in order to peel off a few Republicans is not going to work. I’m glad Republicans have held firm, but let’s not be under any illusions about what that means. In the Democrat leadership, we are not dealing with conventional politicians for whom the goal of being reelected is paramount and will rein in their radicalism. They want socialized medicine and all it entails about government control even more than they want to win elections. After all, if the party of government transforms the relationship between the citizen and the state, its power over our lives will be vast even in those cycles when it is not in the majority. This is about power, and there is more to power than winning elections, especially if you’ve calculated that your opposition does not have the gumption to dismantle your ballooning welfare state.

Consequently, the next six weeks, like the next ten months, are going to be worse than we think. We’re wired to think that everyone plays by the usual rules of politics — i.e., if the tide starts to change, the side against whom it has turned modifies its positions in order to stay viable in the next election. But what will happen here will be the opposite. You have a party with the numbers to do anything it puts its mind to, led by movement Leftists who see their window of opportunity is closing. We seem to expect them to moderate because that’s what everybody in their position does. But they won’t. They will put their heads down and go for as much transformation as they can get, figuring that once they get it, it will never be rolled back. The only question is whether there are enough Democrats who are conventional politicians and who care about being reelected, such that they will deny the leadership the numbers it needs. But I don’t think we should take much heart in this possibility. Those Democrats may well come to think they are going to lose anyway — that’s why so many of them are abandoning ship now. If that’s the case, their incentive will be to vote with the leadership.

Finally, someone else gets it…outside of a decent number on the Right side of the Blogosphere, I mean [I know a good number of you out there have already sussed-out the way the Leftists think]. The majority of folks on the Right don’t want to believe the truth that this is the way the Leftists are thinking. Sure, these folks respect and listen to folks like Mark Steyn, but they dismiss it as being over-the-top and melodramatic when Mr. Steyn and Mr. McCarthy warn that all the Progressives need to do is get their foot in the door with even a very weakly socialistic health care law and, through executive orders and regulations, they can then [and will] fatten the beast with impunity.

The Leftists are thinking of only ends and will use any means necessary to achieve their goals, even it means discarding one set of means for another. The ends the Left seeks are power and control over the lives of everyone [if you think I’m being over-the-top and melodramatic when I wrote that, then read one of their damn philosophical works!]. In their Enlightened enclaves, as I’ve written many times before, the Left believe the vast majority of people are too ignorant to run their own lives [how else to explain the mad desire we have to be free of government interference and control in our lives?].

The Left has THE ANSWER, dammit and, if the masses won’t voluntarily come to see that they are The Illuminated Ones who deserve, by some mutated version of divine right, to rule over every aspect of our lives, then they’ll have to force us to accept their control, to meekly or in chains walk into the Gulag-writ-large they intend to make of the world.

Compromise with such people never, ever benefits our side because the Progressives will take advantage of our good will and any — any — loophole to eventually get everything they originally wanted. If the Left can’t get the full-monty version of their socialized health care plan passed through the proper procedures, they will try to circumvent the proper procedures. If that doesn’t work, they will ‘compromise’ and accept certain pieces of the prize [the merely fascistic ones], those ones that will allow them to take the next steps: through stealthy methods impose the full program on us via regulations and executive orders and any other methods to hand. All the while they will sell The Big Lie that what they are actually doing is not what they’re really doing and that their opposition is pure, unadulterated evil in its intentions and character.

In the wake of Andrew McCarthy’s dead solid perfect posting, William Jacobson and Pat Austin offered some very astute commentary.

Professor Jacobson thinks the decisive battle against socialized health care must be fought now:

Republicans in Congress need to do whatever it takes legislatively to slam the door shut. Any and every legislative tactic must be used to stop the Democrats.

November is too far away to think that elections will matter.

Pat wants to wage an all-out battle now, but has become cynical enough to think we have to have a plan ready if we lose the current battle:

So how do you combat something like this? It’s like the kamikaze pilots in World War II or the suicide bombers of today. They don’t care what the cost, even if it’s their own lives, the mission must be accomplished.

What Republicans need to do is start figuring out a way to roll this thing back once they return to power. I’m not saying give up the fight on stopping the health care bill, but have a plan for the future….

Pat is dead solid perfect: chances are, the Left is going to get the foot in the door that opens on the cell of our enslavement. We have to have reserve divisions ready to roll back this evil.

Andrew McCarthy asks the right questions of the GOP leadership:

…For Republicans, it won’t be enough to fight this thing, then deride it if Democrats pull it off, and finally coast to a very likely electoral victory in November. The question is: What are you going to do to roll this back? What is your plan to undo this?

Mark Steyn seconds Mr. McCarthy:

…I tend to agree with Andy McCarthy’s post from a couple of days ago. In shoving health care down the throats of the American people in the teeth of overwhelming public opposition and any sense of parliamentary decency, the Democrats are in effect taking a bet on Republican wussiness — that, whatever passes, the GOP will have no stomach to undo, no matter the scale of their victory in November.

That seems to me an entirely rational calculation. The Dems will be punished; the Republicans will take over the committee chairmanships and be content, as they often are, to be in office rather than in power; and after a brief time out the Democrats will return to find their new statist behemoth still in place. From their point of view, it makes perfect sense.

The question is: What are Republicans willing to do about it?

They had better show us very soon or we’ll have to take matters into our own hands.

The rubber has met the road.

There’s a question we have to ask ourselves: Will we do our duty and fight to protect the Founding, to protect everything we hold dear? This question can no longer be avoided.