More on Sun-Tzu

For example, I grew up in Illinois, and anyone who knows Midwest politics knows that the only remaining fortresses of the Democratic Party are the unions. They are a consistent voting block, a decent fundraising arm and a truly astonishing campaign tool. If you have never seen a union canvassing operation in full deployment, you have truly missed something. 5,000 members swarm a district for days, and in targeted precincts. Teachers unions go after the women’s vote with events and debates. In a congressional race, an eight to ten-percent swing in a week is not unexpected.

So what should the R’s in Illinois be doing? Master Sun says, that they should be attacking strategies and allies first, and he’s right. There are lots of reasons unions should not be DNC fortresses at all. Most male union members are conservative. Most do not like abortion. Most do not give a tinker’s damn about gay marriage. Most are at the bar on Saturday night and church Sunday morning. Most believe that praying is effectual and that Jesus Christ can get them into heaven. Most have guns, and most hunt, and most support the death penalty. Female union members lean conservative too. Many support general “choice” position, but would also support parental consent and partial birth-bans easily. A recent Illinois poll of teachers had 50% in favor of some kind of school-choice program, and 70% favored abstinence education being part of all sex education courses. Not surprising really, but you can bet the DNC didn’t like it. Why? Because it’s so far from their base position. Fortresses are still strong, but their strategies are weak.

If the RNC truly engaged on any of these issues, putting forth cogent positional statement of contrast between the NDP members in the Midwest and DNC talking points in Washington and these strategies would fall apart and expose Party allies as the special interests that they are. MoveOn.org and others could be exposed as “driving the party away from core Democratic values” etc. etc.

But, we can always count on the RNC, especially in Illinois, to be impotent and stupid. While the Illinois Dems certainly benefit from the proximity to the People’s Republic of Chicago, they further benefit from an ILGOP that hasn’t read its Sun-Tzu. Illinois Republicans have dedicated their last decade to charging headlong into the union fortresses, attempting every form of anti-union initiative that can be imagined. This has slowly, slowly made a difference. Gore won Illinois with 64%, Kerry by 55%. Unions more and more lose tiny percentages of their membership to Republican candidates, and remain susceptible to corruption charges. But unions put the food on the table, and the direct attacks on unions alienate most members, making them even stronger defenders of the union interests, against the evil Republican corporation management. Again, much like MoveOn.org for Dems, we see the donor-driven agenda actually crippling the overall efficacy of the Party.

I actually believe that there will be a backlash against the failure of Republicans to control spending, and a long term problem of having removed the issue from the table when the Dems take control. Bush II is now the worst President and the 109th the worst Congress recent times regarding domestic spending. It’s a terrible precedent, and it hurts the country.

But my overall point is that we are now effectively in a fortress vs. fortress warfare and largely dictated by Party allies over the Party leaders themselves. This makes for ugly scorched-earth policies and shoot-the-officers honorless tactics. We're not trying to persuade, we're just trying to kill each other. We're not trying to win as much as we are trying to beat the other guy.

It's no way to run a railroad. Or a government.