Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There
Noemie Emery invokes the words of Ronald Reagan to urge the right to take a deep breath and shut up. Hacking away at one another and second guessing is a really, really bad idea at the moment.
Refusing to take Ronald Reagan’s famous advice–don’t just do something, stand there–conservative machers are all in a swivet, reading the leaves of the 2008 verdict, plotting to pick off this or that set of voters, opining on what it all means. Actually, just standing there seems like a pretty good option, at least for the moment, and perhaps for the next few weeks and months. Plans made right now may turn out to be useless. There are too many things we don’t know.
We don’t know yet what happened on Tuesday, and what kind of win it will be: a pivotal one, like 1932 and 1980; or a transient success–1964, 1976, 1988, 2004–that at the moment appeared monumental, but four years later had turned out not to be. How much of the glow now surrounding the Democrats is due to themselves, and how much to the nature of Barack Obama, who has a personality that comes along twice in a century, and how long will this last? Which Obama will turn up to govern, the man of moderate temperament, or the functional liberal, whose record is way left of center? When the phone rings for real at three in the morning, who will pick it up: the oh-so-cool cat who was so self-possessed while campaigning, or the neophyte who, outside of campaigning, has never faced a real test in his life? How big will the recession be, and will he prolong it? Will he gain or lose ground in the war on terror? Will we have a new terror attack? If he governs well, he will win again in the next go round, and nothing done now will change it; if he blows a big test on the world stage, then nothing will save him. No grand schemes hatched now will change that.
Please read the whole thing. Emery points out a lot of the unthinkables that have happened to bring this turn of events about. Nobody saw any of these things. Nobody. What we all have to do is to find a way to deliver our message so that it wins over that slight percentage of voters who turned away, stayed home or switched sides.
We begin that by not tearing ourselves apart.
Remember, the Democrats won big in 2006 in Congress. They proceeded to drive the approval rating of Congress into the sewer. Yes, Obama won by promising things he has no way of delivering. It is only a matter of time until people realize they bought more snake oil. Wait for the right moment.
Don’t just do something, stand there.
By Mwalimu Daudi, November 9, 2008 @ 11:01 pm
Sorry, Gaius, but Noemie Emery’s strategy is an excellent way to get clobbered again in 2010. The Left never lets up, and they don’t have to – they have a multi-billion propaganda machine at their disposal called the MSM. If we have any hope of defeating Democrats in 2010, we not only have to out-think the “smart people” (luckily, this is not too difficult), but we have to out-work them as well. That means starting right now.
After the 2006 disaster too many conservatives seemed to sit back and wait for the Democrat-controlled Congress to self-destruct. We all saw how well that strategy worked last Tuesday. The lowest Congressional approval ratings in history seemed not to matter one bit. As Mark Steyn recently pointed out, conservatives in Canada and the UK have been waiting a long time for the Left to implode, and so far all they have to show for it is a minority conservative government in Canada. Running out the clock while you are several touchdowns behind is pretty bad strategy.
It is not necessary to call for the impeachment of the Messiah, as some are already doing. Going howarddean works only for the MSM-protected Left. But today I saw news that the incoming Obama administration plans to review Bush’s executive orders concerning oil drilling. Why not remind voters that if He carries out His plans, gas prices will sky-rocket again and that we will become more dependent than ever upon foreign oil? You can bet your last over-taxed dollar that Democrats will blame Republicans for all Democrat errors in the next four years, so why not at least get put up a fight?
We all saw the Messiah’s thuggish behavior during the campaign, and an Obama administration will be far worse. ACORN will soon have their man in the White House, and already in Minnesota we see efforts by Democrats to steal the Senate seat for Al Frankin. How about speaking out against this theft if nothing else? Does Noemie Emery think Democrats will mellow once in power, or the MSM will suddenly hold them accountable?
By Mwalimu Daudi, November 9, 2008 @ 11:23 pm
I should also point out that Noemie Emery’s memory is a bit faulty when it comes to Reagan. The Gipper may have had “a long grounding in conservative thought”, but he also never ceased to fight for what be believed in. On the eve of the 1964 debacle (a far worse pasting than either 2006 or 2008), Reagan stood against the MSM-controlled tide and delivered perhaps the finest political speech in history. Afterwards he did not wait for history to unroll – he made history.
In other words: Don’t just stand there, do something!
By Quilly MAmmoth, November 10, 2008 @ 7:31 am
Palin-Jindal 2012!