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Home Front: Politix
Trump's Political Blitzkrieg
2017-02-03
[American Thinker] Over the last eight years, the Left has taken the offensive continually while Republicans either capitulated, cooperated, procrastinated, or employed purely defensive maneuvers that amounted to a finger in the dam.

How things have changed.

It’s been barely two weeks since Donald Trump has taken office and Democrats are facing a political blitzkrieg. They are grappling for the means to handle the assault, as the party of the Left has long thought it had total control of both the narrative and the battles.

Stunned political operatives like Nancy Pelosi don’t recognize President Trump is not interested in guerilla warfare tactics, but has put into effect a broad-based offensive against the very citadels of liberal power and bloated government.

The president is putting into play a classic military maneuver applied to politics: keep going on a total and accelerated offensive no matter what in order to keep your enemy digging foxholes and putting up barriers -- while all the while they actually are being forced to slowly retreat under the onslaught, screaming and holding up protest placards all the way to the back of the line.

Democrats are unused to a total war offensive, as they have relied on relentless guerilla warfare and the long march. They are even more unused to being on the defensive, and are ill-prepared to fight defensively. They are aghast over the Trump tactics being applied against them, are assuming the old weapons once applied so effectively against their political enemies still work.

One is reminded of the French infantry fighting in World War I. "Elan," which was a mystical sense of inevitable victory, was supposed to be enough to win the day. The result was that French soldiers were woefully unprepared for German machine guns. Guns did not take "elan" into account.

In like manner, Democrats are still hauling out old and worn out tropes from the 1960s, weapons that won victories and intimidated the opposition for two generations. But the old tactics are obsolete and increasingly prove to be virtually useless. Millions of Americans have repudiated the orthodox liturgy of the Left, wedded as it is to constant and relentless battles about race, diversity, open borders, and globalism. Millions are also sick and tired of being labeled heretics by radical Democrats who constantly dismiss decent and basically charitable Americans as haters, homophobes, misogynists, and bitter clingers to "guns and religion."
Posted by:Besoeker

#9  "Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense; benefits should be conferred gradually, and in that way they will taste better."

Niccolo Machiavelli
Posted by: james   2017-02-03 22:06  

#8   Mercutio - consider that Icahn owns 8.7% of this firm being shook down..
Regulatory standoff could close Indonesia’s golden mine

US mining giant Freeport McMoRan has challenged government mandated divestment and export bans. The fate of its Grasberg mine lies in the balance
Posted by: 3dc   2017-02-03 20:31  

#7  Over the last eight years, the Left has taken the offensive continually while Republicans either capitulated,...

Try ever since the 1995-96 shut down.
Posted by: magpie   2017-02-03 15:41  

#6  Just think of how Carl Ichann would deal with these problems and you can see the next few years
Posted by Mercutio


In other words, there will be a reduction or sell-off of lagging product lines.
Posted by: Besoeker   2017-02-03 14:42  

#5  Your analysis/analogy is spot on, Mercutio!
Posted by: Whitch Turkeyneck3879   2017-02-03 14:26  

#4  There's no need to look for analogies outside Trump's experience such as making him a latter day Sun Tzu based on his stint at military school.

Just apply what he actually is - a corporate CEO with a job to do.

Think of him as a corporate raider involved in a hostile takeover of a company that was once the industrial leader but has fallen on hard times.

The problems he faces are:
- a management that is more interested in their benefits package than the stockholders
- a series of contracts with other companies that is not in the company's best interest.
- entrenched special interests that want their own area of the company to prosper at the expense of the company as a whole
- Aggressive competition from other companies who are catching up technologically.
- Built in headwinds from an industry association that exists in part to prevent the company from re-attaining primacy in the industry

Just think of how Carl Ichann would deal with these problems and you can see the next few years
Posted by: Mercutio   2017-02-03 13:49  

#3  One is forced to recall that DT, as he was called, throve at that military academy. It sounds like he studied more than countermarching.
Posted by: trailing wife   2017-02-03 11:53  

#2  If some government freezes Soro's bank accounts the rioting would fizzle out fairly quickly.
Posted by: rjschwarz   2017-02-03 10:59  

#1  "open borders" = denial of US sovereignty
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2017-02-03 10:31  

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