In a previous article we examined the loonier parts of the Dem’s Green New Deal (GND). As wacky as it is, there are significant parts of the American people who are dumb and gullible enough to buy it, to paraphrase the demigod Mencken. So, like it or not, as absurd as it seems, we will have to combat this wish list of pre-adolescent Bolshevism.
However, the Bolshies are adept in taking the initiative and moving the argument. What they will do is keep proposing things in the GND they know have no chance of passing in their entirety. But they will apparently compromise, getting small to moderate parts of it passed, saying, “Look how reasonable we are. This is only 10 percent of what we wanted.” However, 10 percent after 10 percent of compromise victories and they will be well on their way to the authoritarian socialist future they envision and think they will personally profit from.
We must meet them big idea for big idea and propose a radical downsizing of government and wide expansion of economic freedom. Faced with the two stark alternatives there are still enough free and self-interested Americans to choose the enlightened option and/or move the polemic impetus in that direction.
Enough of playing defense to their death of free market liberty and unaccountable government offensive.
Time to counterattack.
But where to look in history for an example to guide us and then, as this is politics where marketing and advertising are kings, how to sell it?
We can look to 1942-43 for an answer in one of the most hard-fought counterattacks in all history: the Soviet pushback in the Battle of Stalingrad. In this case the Dems share the role in the analogy with their fellow National Socialists. We, ironically, are the actual Reds. As has been said, the troops in feldgrau had, “Not much fun in Stalingrad.”
The Hun fought their way deep inside Russia after their June 1941 invasion and Stalin’s paralysis in the face of it. As the battle ensued they took a good portion of European Russia, took the initiative, and moved the battle lines. And yes, we have taken some recent hits like losing the House, losing the shutdown, and the delayed SOTU. Not exactly Barbarossa-like debacles, but losses nonetheless. The Dems have some of the initiative. If we are to believe their media lapdogs, all of it.
Now their avowed goal, at least the goal of many of them and a hot potato to others, is the Green New Deal. They have pushed this far into the national policy debate on their way to what they think is basically remaking the country in their image, as the German Army and its auxiliaries had plans for a very different Russia. Nancy as Paulus and AOC as Von Manstein? I know, a serious stretch. But hang with me for a tad. Trump as Zhukov in a fighting sense? A bit better.
You know the story of the Boche not being prepared for winter fighting and losing. What pushed him over the edge was Operation Uranus (oh, grow up) of November 1942. The overall plan, launched in conjunction with Operation Mars directed against other German units, was the same strategy Zhukov had beaten the Japanese with three years earlier at Khalkhin Gol. The Germans, like the Dems with GND, had bitten off more than they could chew. The Nazis believed their own press releases about Wehrmacht invincibility and Soviet weakness. They dressed inappropriate to the season because they thought the Sovs would be defeated before the snow fell. The farther they advanced into the Russian interior the more they were baited steadily into a trap, as Napoleon had over a century ago. The Hun made a choice of very bad terrain to fight on. Then the Red Army snapped the trap shut at Stalingrad.
Many Dems actually think the American public wants an end to air travel, cars, and private healthcare. In choosing to fight here, the Dems, like the Germans before them, have picked bad political terrain. For there is no national consensus, nor nothing even close, for what they propose. The further they mistake their own unfeasible and unpopular theories for realistic policy and advance too far into the debate using them, the better we can snap the trap behind them.
So, as we hold the better ground at this point almost by default, let’s counterattack and pin them down on the bad ground they have chosen to fight on. Yes, the president and the RNC have already begun to do it and do it well. But we must not only ridicule the GND, we must offer a competing vision on the same scale. Voters are moved not only by something to defeat, but by a better vision to fight for.
What could it look like? What advantageous terrain could we bait the Dems fight on now and up to the 2020 election? Call this…the GND counterattack, Operation BlueBait.
Electively Privatize Social Security: Cut into the Dem’s popularity with the young by giving anyone under thirty a choice as to whether to stick with the old social security system or join a new system based on private investment. Like the Dem GND, is this gambit ahead of public support? Sure it is. I don’t mean to do the bloody thing. I mean to draw the Dems out unto the open field and make them defend the old system to their pet millennials who may get stung badly by it in later years. Remember how they used to scare seniors with the GOP threat to social security? Now scare millennials about it from the other angle. Would also give the GOP base nice juicy red meat to chew on. If it somehow, some way passed? Even better.
Government Restructure: Chop Commerce, HUD, Energy, and Education departments. Fold needed duties of such into other departments. Dramatically send the swamp packing. Sure, way hard to do. But let’s see the Dems defend bureaucrats against our message of “every dollar saved is a dollar a young family won’t be paying in taxes.” Again, a feast for the GOP base and possible millennial chow. Odds to get it done? 3 to 1 against. To move the argument? 4 to 1 for.
Infrastructure: Yeah, an old horse that the president has already mentioned. But zoom it up with a message to the unions about mass multiyear employment opportunities and to the young about “building the country you and your family will live in the next fifty years.” It undercuts Dems with the unions, young families, and some Dems have already signed on to the basic concept. This one we might have to actually do, as the president’s advocacy of it, as Kissinger once noted on another issue, “…has the added benefit of being true.”
Education: Replace the antiquated federal college loan system by putting the emphasis on less expensive vocational training, GI Bill benefits expanded to graduate degrees, and across-the-board loan forgiveness to military veterans and first responders. Millennials and many others will love the loan forgiveness and flock to the military or other noble callings. The values inculcated in these professions may go a long way to decreasing Dem registration and turnout. It will hit the leftist academic establishment, no friend to conservatism or in general towards America, as gender studies majors dry up and students study the vastly more useful subject of air conditioning repair. Also, giving vets a better economic shot at an MA may begin to reverse the Left’s Long March Through the Institutions. Yes, this may cost a moderate amount. Granted. But the cultural benefits are well worth it.
You get it. Undercut the Dems in scope and appeal over their heads to their own constituencies. But the scope is in cutting government, not expanding it into socialism. These suggestions and others can make up the ammo.
Play Zhukov to their Paulus. Hold them by the GND nose in a dirty house to house fight then kick them in the ass with Operation BlueBait.
The GND is alone on the battlefield right now. We’re reacting to it, not making them react to us. But we’ve still got the better ground to fight on.
Let’s use it.
