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Ulysses S … Trump?
General George McClellan was beloved by his troops. McClellan returned the affection, earning a reputation as a well organized and meticulous commander. Giving credit where due, McClellan turned the Army of the Potomac into a cohesive unit and kept it together, even in the face of defeat. He is also credited with fortifying Washington, DC and securing the Union frontier, all through his skills in logistics. But after some early victories, defeats became all too common. It is a common theme of biographies of McClellan that, when it came to actual battle, the general was overly cautious, unable (or unwilling) to gamble, and failed to take advantage of Confederate mistakes that might have turned stalemates into victories, or victories into routs. According to some, McClellan consistently overestimated his opponents’ strength and, thus, refused to advance or attack for fear of losing. Lincoln came to distrust the general and, when sufficiently frustrated with McClellan’s hesitations and caution, fired him.
The Army of the Potomac then went through a series of generals (Burnside, Meade, Hooker), all of whom were blamed for similar failures of leadership, chiefly the inability or unwillingness to advance against the Confederacy. Then came Ulysses Grant. In the western states, Grant had fought hard against the Confederacy. Unlike the other generals, he was willing to risk casualties to achieve strategic advantages and would try unproven tactics if he thought some advantage could be gained. With the full aid of superior Union industry and a far larger Union population — advantages his predecessors shared but failed to exploit — he was relentless in his advances, racking up casualty numbers that earned him criticism as a butcher of his own troops. But he won battles.
The years since 2008 have reminded me greatly of our Civil War. The Obama administration has effectively declared a cultural war on middle America through an expanded regulatory state, lawsuits in retribution of political appointments, collaboration with far-left activist groups, the stirring-up of racial animosities, attacks on religious institutions, the opening of borders, assaults on the Second Amendment and the attempts to gut the First Amendment, and scores of petty and vindictive skirmishes against small businesses, churches, and private citizens. Our president has pitted half of America against the rest, claiming — like some restless dictator — that his advances and occupations are really defensive in nature, while wielding powers no prior president would have dared try.
We scored a few victories in return, regaining first the House and, later, the Senate as well. We won many lower court victories, but the battles that counted at the Supreme Court have frequently been lost. As for our generals in the cultural war, John Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell deserve more credit than they are generally given. They returned the House and Senate to our side and Regular Order. They stopped the relentless legislative push to enshrine and secure the regulatory victories claimed by Obama. They built a defensive works that, while not impenetrable, have held true against many of the worst excesses of Obama’s agenda.
Yet — like McClellan before them — they’ve held party unity and discipline remarkably solid, but have secured few offensive victories and rarely exploited the enemies’ vulnerabilities. “We need more troops! We need more Congressmen and Senators!” they’ve pled, without ever breaking camp.
Mitt Romney, too, failed to make a solid case for himself or to sufficiently attack Obama; such, it seemed, would have involved getting his hands too dirty. He waved the flag and paraded the troops, but led a tepid campaign that seemed more hopeful of victory through Obama’s mistakes than his own aggression.
So now we come to the campaign season again, and we have a general (for those who would follow him) who could well cause enormous casualties for our side. “And yet he fights,” as Lincoln said of Grant. His principles are uncertain, and his tactics are unconventional, hearkening back to an America well-nigh forgotten. And yet he fights. He won the Republican primaries, out-maneuvering the party princelings and upstarts, turning them against each other. Those within his party who were most dismissive of his abilities when this began are now those most opposed to his victories and, unsurprisingly, most convinced of his inevitable failure. Many — like McClellan running for president after his termination — are now threatening to oppose the one who succeeded where they all failed.
The worst damage Obama has done to this republic has been to our national unity and, though it, support for the rule of law. No president since Lincoln has been so utterly divisive, and no president has ever so actively pursued division. No previous president has so openly sought to curtail the First Amendment without even attempting to disguise the attacks as “temporary” or “expedient.” Obama has launched and led a cultural war on America, the likes of which has only been seen writ in larger scale in major revolutions in France, Russia, or China. Hillary shows every indication that she will continue this war. Love him or hate him, only Trump is openly fighting them.
Yes, the man is morally distasteful. Yes, the man is corrupt. Yes, he may well butcher the down-ticket races in this election. And yet he fights, and for the sake of wrenching the presidency from the cultural Marxists, we should not fear a bloody battle. With the head of this cultural war firmly entrenched in Washington, with an uncertain and timid Congress unable or unwilling to attack the executive overreach, and with the courts having deferred the very law of the land to the whims of the cultural warlords, we must remove the Democrats from their power base. We must remove their hands from the levers of control. We must break their stranglehold on the media and the dissemination of information. After four or eight more years, the damage may be insurmountable, and the losses unrecoverable.
Trump may be the most reprehensible and amoral candidate the GOP has ever fielded, yet he is the general we have. And at least he is fighting.
Published in Politics
Uh, Trump constantly refers to her as “Crooked Hillary”?
And that is more than any other candidate was willing to do? We must have watched different debates.
I cannot for one moment imagine Grant bragging to a news paper about cheating on his wife with the wives of other men. Please stop comparing Trump to honorable men of the past because you imagine some vague similarity. Of course Trump fights, he’s a narcissistic bully. What is he fighting for? Who know’s, it changes from day to day. One thing I know for sure is I won’t be voting for him or Hillary. I don’t care to be linked in any way to either of those reprobates.
Agreed. Luckily I live in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat since Johnson, so I don’t have to worry about voting on the presidential line.
I don’t get the frequent refrain that the party is in mortal danger. The Republicans control the Senate, the House of Representatives, 31 (?) governorships and a hefty majority of state legislatures. What if the Trump vote simply reflects a revolt against [percieved and/or actual] namby-pamby leadership in Washington? The real downside is that those myopic leaders are taking the wrong message — except maybe Paul Ryan — from Trump’s emergence as the GOP nominee. They are doubling down on their disdain for the electorate.
Although my theory may be all wet — I also keep hearing that Trump’s core support comes from the moderate and typically non-politically involved, who presumably don’t have strong opinions about Republican leadership, just what the government has [or has not] done for them lately.
As I said earlier, the analogy is definitely flawed. And voting for neither is a fair choice in itself – it is essentially saying that if Trump wins, you did not endorse it, or if Hillary wins, then the damage done is recoverable.
I just cannot make that calculation myself.
Unfortunately Ohio is very much a battleground state, so my vote here will matter. The decision is definitely easier in the core states for one party or the other.
The argument over candidates is something of a sidebar at this point. But attacking Hillary is something they all did – the question comes down to whether their attacks would have actually done damage to her, and in the final slate of candidates I did not see how any of the others could have actually beaten her. In particular, my criticisms of Cruz’s campaign were already hashed out back in November.
This posted twice–the one left is the preferred version.
I think you capture the essence of what is going on. I see it this way, there are two factions now. One faction sees that business as usual will save the nation. The other factions sees that business as usual will not work and something more is needed. Trump appeals to the latter.
Now, you can say, “but if you blow it all up, then what?” to faction two.
You can also say to faction one “your way has had 50 years to roll back liberalism and it has not even come close”.
At the Atlanta meet up, I asked what people thought it would take, and the answer of one of the room was “Civil War”. I am not sure I disagree.
If you think we are at the end of the Republic, then voting for Trump does not seem so bad.
You might be right that it is the relative level of perceived crisis that makes the difference for many.
I don’t know who these cultural Marxists are. I have never met one. I don’t think they have even a tenth of the influence that you guys claim they possess.
Honestly, I am not optimistic either. I just firmly believe that things can always get worse. In this case I think they will get worse before they get better. “It can’t get any worse” or “too late for that” is a seductive line of thinking that can be dangerous. It leads people to embrace things they ought not embrace. That’s all I’m saying.
I think for many, it is the relative level of perceived crisis that makes the difference. Not for all, though.
I don’t lack for apocalyptic instincts. Anyone who’s ever complimented me on my self-control or calmness during a crisis (to the extent I really have those) has complimented me on something I imposed upon myself to control my unfortunate natural volatility in what are pretty mundane situations. I would happily burn DC to the ground and dance on the ashes. Well, almost. But what I’d happily almost do I unhappily refrain from doing, because restraint.
And what my apocalyptic instincts tell me is that Trump is, domestically, at least, even more business as usual than usual. I’m not saying my instincts are right, just that to the extent I am pessimistic about business as usual saving the nation, from that pessimism springs my pessimism about Trump. I do think he’s a managerial Progressive who gets mistaken for something else simply because he talks like he doesn’t care what people think. And when people confirm to themselves that the way to rebel against managerial Progressivism is by choosing a managerial Progressive, I’m not sure how we escape that.
Of course I do the un-fun thing of countering my pessimism with the question of whether Hilary will be worse. I haven’t completely made up my mind yet, but there’s still plenty of time, so as Quinn said, no need to rush – and even if my mind were already made up, at this point perhaps I’d just keep it to myself.
To be honest, I don’t know if we’re in crisis or not. I sense crisis. Yet if we’re in crisis, I believe the crisis started long ago – and yet we’re still here. If there is a crisis, I don’t think Trump will help. Conversely, the less crisis there is, perhaps the less bad Trump becomes.
skipsul has posted the best argument for Trump that I’ve seen. But the one big problem I have with Trump is he isn’t honorable. U.S. Grant was a drunk, except when it counted, in battle. He probably didn’t cheat on his wife, and he actually wasn’t a drunk when they were together. Flawed as he was, he was honorable.
Yet, if he’s successful, it won’t be the first time someone so flawed as Trump ended up doing more good than harm.
Like Grant was for Lincoln, Trump is a roll of the dice. Something that I’m more and more inclined to support.
Desperate times.
Agreed. There are many people and factions on the left and the center-left, just as there are on the right, but for some reason we listen to writers like Stanley Kurtz who like to believe all our opponents have a unified secret headquarters, like the war room in Dr. Strangelove, where they march in lockstep and swear eternal allegiance. Funny thing; the left thinks the same of us.
I think a lady should so be.
I think he is more pro-American than the other managerial progressive in the other party. (edited to add the word “other”)
The man who fights is Ted Cruz. And there is no doubt he is fighting for the right side. That’s why the GOP Establishment went all out to stop him, even if it meant Trump. Because Trump won’t fight them.
The headquarters isn’t so secret anymore Gary. It’s some conference room at Facebook HQ.
An interesting viewpoint, but one that demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge of Grant. Grant was a quiet, unassuming man. When he went to Washington he checked into a hotel and asked for nothing special, made no point about who he was, nor did he expect anyone to put themselves out for him. Comparing Trump to Grant based simply on the fact that Trump “talks” a great war, but risks nothing, is an absurd comparison.
Trump is much more like McClellan whose ego was overwhelming, but who was completely incapable of leading men into battle. Grant had real moral courage. McClellan had a big mouth and a far greater sense of his greatness than was warranted. He wanted to replace Lincoln. He blamed “the politicians” for all of the troubles he had. They gave him an army almost double the size of Lee’s, and he still wouldn’t fight. When the generals under him won battles by their own courage, McClellan tried to take the glory for himself.
Your comparison is way off, and totally unhistorical. Trump is a McClellan, a Walter Mitty with a vast bubble of an ego filled with nothing but hot air.
Even if they did try to suppress Conservative news, I don’t see how they are cultural Marxists.
Today, however, shredding the Constitution is a Democratic project. If Hillary wins and the country survives, a subsequent Republican president could still garner a mandate to restore some semblance of Constitutional governance. If, on the other hand, the first post-Obama Republican president uses agencies like the IRS and FBI to settle scores, shoots from the hip on policy, and governs by executive order, then Obamaism will be ratified as the bipartisan understanding of how the US government works. There will be no path back to liberty.
So if you want to argue that Hillary will be so bad that the country will die a quick death, or that the chance of recovery are so slim that it’s not worth the risk, then I suppose it is less bad to accept a permanently illiberal America. But have no illusions: You are proposing to amputate the patient’s limbs because you perceive his life to be in danger, and he will never walk again.
Talk about missing the point of the comparison. He was going for the “he fights” bit.
We really are a bunch of political nerds, aren’t we, to go hammer and tongs against a metaphor the the author admits is imperfect.
I don’t even know that I could define cultural marxism (though I could probably muster a passable argument). I was responding to Gary’s broader point about our perceptions of our opponents.
Do you see any chance that someone acting beyond constitutional limits to achieve goals they don’t like is a possible way to encourage Dems back to constitutional limits?
I considered it, carefully. But I doubt it. Democrats are all about the ends these days; I think they’d double down on the Terror phase of their revolution. Similar to what I wrote here: http://ricochet.com/title-ix-1999-and-1789/
The problem is that we know Hillary will do this – her abuse of power is already well documented, and 4 or 8 years more of it reduces the chance of a conservative comeback markedly. We do not know with Trump, and there is no small amount of projection when we insist that he will somehow destroy the remains of Constitutional order.