The New Playbook: Rules for the Right

The post "Three things the Obamedia will do to depress Republican turnout and help Obama" addressed to Republicans, which is up on PUMA blog Hillbuzz, makes one thing stand out as mole on a lily white bosom: that Republicans are playing by a very antiquated rule book.

Here's a News Flash for the defenders of civilized society: there's a war on, y'know!

Here's the thing in military terms. The rules of engagement are dictated by pragmatism: whatever is expedient to the cause - no restrictions - rules. The officer corps consists of agenda driven, Democrat campaign strategists David Axelrod, Dick Morris and Paul Begala et al, the MSM are their foot soldiers. We'll get back to you as soon as we've flushed out the hidden Secretaries of War. While neocons were celebrating the end of history, the opposition unilaterally connived to no longer play by the Geneva convention.

Or let's try explain that in sports terms. Say you are a member of a sports team. All members but you received a letter with recent changes in the rulebook. The next time you enter the field, things will seem strangely different. You'll catch up and get the picture eventually (or not), but right now we are in a defining presidential election in which one party no longer plays by the old rules.

Either Republicans adopt some of the street wise Alinsky Rules for Radicals as championed by the Dems, or think up some winning strategies of their own, fast and furious. Here we advocate the latter, foregoing the unedifying gutter ethics as advocated by the radical Left.

- Caption: the OODA LOOP, of which the Palin VP choice was an example - fighter pilot John McCain must be well versed -

Republicans are always on the defensive, which makes sense for a conservative party. But that means that the forces of 'progress' and 'change' will always have the advantage of the attack. Remember, offense is the best defense.

This has been the frame of reference for donkeys years. The opposition has accumulated loads of strategies and tactics to play a winning game. In fact, they are always on the advance, while conservatives have steadily been losing ground. We may even have reached tipping point in an Obama tenure, when the latitude to recover any lost ground, may be forever forfeited.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union Republicans and conservatives (neo conservatives to a much lesser extent) have taken their eyes off the ball, falling for the oldest trick in the book yet, the assumption that the opponent thinks like them, and therefore must have conceded defeat. Per Fukuyama, it was game, set and match - or was it?

But the forces of change neither sleep, nor will they ever acknowledge that their ideology is based on a fallacy. That has been the whole point of the subjectivist campaign over the last two centuries: "If reason makes no sense to your argument as reality clearly shows otherwise, attack reason as pernicious and superficial, and persuade the world that reality doesn't exist."

The beast no longer presents itself by the old Socialist epithets; these have no meaning to younger voters anyway (the commie memes would have been useful, given that they pierce the romanticist PR bubble). Today's neotot guise is that of the Postmodern politician, fuzzy, bordering the anti statesman. Passion driven, but undefined messages of 'hope' and 'change' have taken the place of objective definitions.

They project the image of a slight lean towards a few carefully targeted collective measures, and seem vaguely sympathetic to larger governments, that befit "the demands and requirements of a fast globalizing world" ... all for the greater good, of course.

The approach to working the masses is charged with high emotion; fact, truth and reality are putty, pliable as the aim requires. The message is that times truly have changed, that old laws have become obsolete, that man has evolved into a new being with a superior morality who is no longer in need of the crude logic of shopkeepers. Truth is, that metaphysical laws do not change, only man-made creations do.

And so they play at impressions, perceptions, building false image constructs (e.g. the bitter, angry McCain or the haute couture addicted Palin), catching emotions before they're filtered and exposed to the harsh reality of reason.

This trick is even easier to pull on impressionable young people whose minds are open to suggestion (see also "The Comprehensive Guide to Youth for Obama"). It is very old playbook harking back to old Europe during the interbellum, when Mussolini and Corporal Hitler were playing the masses with false dichotomies, vacuous sound bites and the overwhelming demagogy of passion with an appeal to the will of the people.

The Left - by their innate philosophy of coercion that gives them a free pass to manipulate people's minds - have harnessed a host of psychological strategies to their battle wagon.

What gives, if in the process they create a semi Fascist, crypto totalitarian society? Or perhaps that is precisely that what they have in mind, so they can pronounce liberal democracy - a corollary of individual rights - obsolete as well. Utopia is always built on the ashes of collapsed empires.

The campaigner of today needs to formulate strategies to deflect the 'end justifies the means' assaults, which are typical of the essentially amoral, pragmatism driven campaigns. You can start by taking their own advice.

Study and read to shreds Hillbuzz' "Three things the Obamedia will do to depress Republican turnout and help Obama": resist the mantra of the media cyborgs, resistence is futile, give up the fight, the race is over; ignore the false siren calls of early landslides, be not impressed by pent up claims - "It’s all a head game, a fake out. All of this talk (...) is just garbage the Obamedia shovels to make you give up and sit home so Obama can win. (...) It really is as simple as that ...

Update: the conceptual framework has now been identified: rather than conventional war it's more like asymmetrical warfare, in which insurgents use all means possible to weaken and defeat the incumbents. Therefore, we should look at counter-insurgency models for a proper answer.




- Filed on Articles in "Rules for the Right" -