Tea Party Strategy 2012 Rides Again

Back from the swamps of DCgobah, here's this cool X-Wing I was able to raise from the swamp. It's an older model and the dashboard is choked with green slime, but she's mechanically sound.

This is the machine that Newt rode into the dirt (any landing you can levitate away from), and which Romney tried to raise, but he couldn't get it done — Sith Lord Obama had a much higher Candichrolian count. Here's the original with some clarifications (structure not carried over from original), and I'll accept suggestions for updates into a new post.

Tea Party Strategy

Build Majorities - Punish RINOs - Reward Conservatives - Defeat Democrats

Goal: Build a Permanent Tea Party --- Strategy: Take Over the GOP From the Inside

[four-square, "quad chart" elements follow]

1. HOW TO WIN EVERY YEAR

• Punish RINOs where we are strong
• Build Majorities where we are weak
• Reward conservatives with support all year round
• Prevent Democrat victories even if we have to use RINOs

2. HOW TO WIN IN 2012

• Punish the House RINOs
• Build a Senate Majority
• Reward House conservatives
• Eject Obama from the White House, and use Romney to do it

3. VICTORY NOT COMPROMISE

Accept tactical setbacks to preserve strategic capability
Over successive elections:

• Exercise influence
• Build majorities
• Gain control
• Make gains where we can
• Maintain where we must
• Blast the RINOs out of the GOP
• Without handing anything serious to the Democrats.

4. HOW TO LOSE

• Vote for third party
• Stay at home
• Become RINOs

[Regular text at bottom]

Let tactics support strategy, or all is wasted --- Know whom to support or oppose and why

This is a long-term strategy. Follow it every year. Adjust tactics based on changing circumstances. Always aim at this strategy, and we will take back our government and our country.

The Tea Party asks for your vote. I ask for your vote. Please support Republican candidates against the left, and support Tea Party candidates against the Republicans. Wisely.

BOTTOM OF PAGE:

Support Senate Republicans - Punish House RINOs - Reward House Conservatives - Block Obama

Well, that was then. What has changed? Obama and Romney, obviously. We do not have a House majority deep enough to support punishing weaklings too seriously. That is a luxury that we earn through large majority. So we need to cool it on that score. Note the damage that is being done through ejecting Santos and the impending desertion of McCarthy. It was right and good to replace him as Speaker -- his decision to wound our thin majority should make that clear even to the most unity-affirming transpublicans.

Translating that last line into current day, when we barely hold the House, are within a few heartbeats of taking the Senate, and do not hold the Oval Office, all we can do is build build build. The only punishment of RINOs available has already been magnificently accomplished — conservatives ousted a RINO speaker and installed a conservative! I can take Yes for an answer! So we should support everybody with an R, fools, knaves, and all. It's too late in the season to hunt McConnell.

The Tea Party is still alive and well, just going by various names these days. MAGA is too closely tied with Trump personally, and the hagiography is a bit thick. Yet this is not exactly new — back when Herman Cain and then Newt Gingrich were in front, they had their culty types as well. I spent most of my Romney effort trying to get those faithful back into the damned boat of reasonable voting. So Trumpiness does not strike me as new or particularly troubling, just not so useful as it once was. The way I see it, there is a huge overlap between MAGA/Trump, Tea Party, Conservatives, and Republicans. Yet the part which is Republican but none of the other three is our Achilles' heel. Obviously when I say "Support Tea Party against Republicans -- wisely," I am talking about picking our shots and taking only the best opportunities.

The Tea Party should not take lectures from the GOP for Angle and O'DOnnell, when their losses would have been unremarkable had the GOP not gotten itself down to a 37-member near-superminority! At the same time, they didn;t win, did they?

We will make some mistakes. We will acknowledge mistakes as such and move on, but without taking any guff off of the stuffed-shirt GOP types for whom tomorrow is always the right day to fight, because tomorrow never comes.

Trump is welcome in the Tea Party. Trump supporters are as well. But this is not MAGA, and the "T" in Tea Party does not stand for Trump. I'm grateful to the man and I'm proud of the team, but this is not that. And for those who wish to organize and have structure, and club officers and a seal to stamp things. This is not that either. We are a party-in-being, as the UK's most effective use of battleships at some times was to keep them pierside. The front line as deployable reserve, uncommitted, a menace to every front in its theater on short notice. This is not a political party per se. Instead, we recognize that the only way for the Tea Party to be effective is as an internal threat to the GOP.

The Trump years were a wonderful fluke. We shall not see their kind again. Yet victory is not a thing of the past. We can have victories going forward. I believe that I have outlined a way to do this.