Not Your Grandma's Religious Right - Republican Strategy Insights

[Blue State Blues]

Article on the Religious Right's influence provides insight on Republican political "strategery."

on Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0106-30.htm

Not Your Grandma's Religious Right
Don't be shocked or awed, but the Christian right isn't satisfied merely running the government
by Bill Berkowitz

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The Art of Political War

During the 2000 campaign, conservative activist David Horowitz's political primer entitled "The Art of Political War: How Republicans Can Fight to Win" was distributed "compliments" of Tom DeLay, the party's majority whip, to every GOP member of the U.S. Congress, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber pointed out in their book "Banana Republicans -- How the Right Wing Is Turning America Into a One-Party State" (Tarcher/Penguin 2004).

Horowitz's pamphlet was so highly thought of by the Heritage Foundation, Washington's premier right wing think tank, that it "sent another 2,300 copies to conservative activists around the country." Karl Rove, the mastermind behind Bush's campaigns, called Horowitz's pamphlet "a perfect pocket guide to winning on the political battlefield from an experienced warrior."

According to The Nation's Scott Sherman, Horowitz's work argued that "Politics is war conducted by other means. In political warfare you do not fight just to prevail in an argument, but to destroy the enemy's fighting ability... In political wars, the aggressor usually prevails."

Horowitz expands upon the pamphlet's theme in the book "The Art of Political War and Other Radical Pursuits (Spence Publishing Company, 2000): "Politics is a war of position. In war there are two sides: friends and enemies. Your task is to define yourself as the friend of as large a constituency as possible compatible with your principles, while defining your opponent as the enemy whenever you can. The act of defining combatants is analogous to the military concept of choosing the terrain of battle. Choose the terrain that makes the fight as easy for you as possible."

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Those driving Republican strategy see politics as a war, and a viscous, no rules, no honor, no Geneva Conventions, kind of war at that. They're out to utterly destroy the other party.

Dems, especially the DLC, operate with a completely different concept of what politics is.

It's more than simply, "we play nice, but they play dirty." One party is trying to play an elegant chess-game of power, leverage and influence against the "opponent," while the other party is bent on completely obliterating "the enemy."

The Dems don't have to adopt the same views, but they have to understand who they are fighting and how far they're willing to go.