I’m not sure if the modern Democratic Party is more like a vicious eighth-grade mean girl in its hysterical emotionalism or more like Glenn Close in the last scene of Fatal Attraction. You know, after she boils the bunny, when the gorgeous Anne Archer shoots her as she is coming out of the shower with a knife in her hand. Both she and the Dems, not good at letting go.
What started out as a brilliant move for them of confirmation delay and message obfuscation degenerated into farce when they actually started to put credence in their own made-up charges. They violated one of DC’s cardinal rules: They believed their own press releases.
Before that they had the GOP dead in their sights, taking advantage of Republican political timidity to put a spanner in the process and make the eventual confirmation painful for the Republicans. We all know how that turned out. The situation was soooo strange that the new heroes of the GOP rank and file turned out to be Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins.
Let that sink in: Graham and Collins. Yepper, we live in strange times.
But now that it’s over, what can we take away from it? The Dems played it almost perfectly until the end and we made every mistake we could, or Chuck Grassley could, until the end. How do we improve our game? To wit:
The only rule now is that there are no rules: The Dems have made this total war. Everything is fair play. But much as Danang Dick Blumenthal is finding out, that wisdom cuts both ways. So, like in war, we need to FTX this out the wazoo. We need an in-house Dem Aggressor Team to model this so by the time we get to a fight we’re ready for anything they throw at us. And we can’t play by the usual Marquess of Queensbury plan anymore. We need to remember the quote attributed to Captain John Parker, “If they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”
Like feral dogs, Dems smell weakness then go for the jugular: As Churchill said about the Boche, “They’re either at your throat or at your feet.” For now, we can eighty-six the feet part. That’s where old Chuck made his mistake. The second the Dems saw he was trying to play fair, they went for his throat. He forgot appeasement only begets aggression.
Absurd works: You can say anything about anybody and no matter how ridiculous some will breathlessly believe you. Clumsy pass made at a girl? End of career. Ralphing after a kegger? Life in prison. Throwing ice at someone at a party? Death penalty.
Gang rape, alien abduction, membership in Hydra, all are legitimate questions these days to be probed on the front page of The New York Times. No evidence. No problem!
Fun with pawns: Recall the penultimate scene in Patriot Games, when Sean Bean tells his IRA cohorts who are trying to kidnap a royal, “That’s not my mission!” He exclaims this right before he riddles them with lead. Well, Chrissy Ford thought she was there for herself and the cause. Chrissy Snow could have seen she was being used as a dupe to hit Kavanaugh, regardless of the price to anyone concerned. Ford’s mission was not Feinstein’s mission and Ford never woke up to that. Doubt she ever will.
Accepting the premise: For too long Republicans have internalized a masochistic worldview. They are scared to death to pull a Lindsey Graham or otherwise call out a liar or loon because they accept the basic premise put forth by their enemies, i.e.: they are all racist, sexist, patriarchal rape encouragers, if not worse. When you start from that premise the opposition is writing your playbook. The president has it right when he gives it back to them with knobs on. But the president does something even better; he takes the fight to them. The rest of the GOP needs to stop playing eternal defense and understand the benefit of the preemptive attack.
This fight has united the GOP. The Dems? Less than you think: All and sundry pundits are extolling the supposed upcoming blue wave in the House and its subsequent power to frustrate Trump. But hold on. Yes, the Dems are likely to take the House, as the GOP will also likely gain 3-4 in the Senate. But the crazed leftists who are panting for power are not the only Dems in town. There is a small rump of operationally non-disturbed Dems who know the nation as a whole did not react well to their Kavanaugh shenanigans. They also tend to be older and in leadership positions in the Dem caucus. We’ve seen the hard left challenge some of them in Dem primaries and win. That had to leave a bruise. Bottom line? No love lost between these two factions and a GOP minority in the House may get to play divide and conquer.
This is just the beginning: As I write this, Dem oppo gnomes are preparing the case against Amy Barrett. They’ll use her devotion to her faith to hit her as anti-woman, anti-choice, blah, blah, blah. But this just past conformation fight will seem tame when it comes to that one and future political conflicts. The Dem brownshirts we saw deployed will get more brazen and will more than possibly launch coordinated physical violence against some conservative opponent. Alarmist, you say? Ask Steve Scalise.
So the bunnies will boil at a faster rate, GOP leaders will be targeted, and the Dems will try to control their own little SA while simultaneously denying ties to the more rabid of them in the same breath.
All of this a lead-up to 2020.
Then, all bets are off except this one: the fight will be not just about Trump. But for the shape of America for generations to come.
