There are those on the right who now believe that the passage of Obamacare is inevitable. I don’t know; I don’t think public whip counts are worth the pixels they’re printed on. But I also know that elections have consequences, and up to now it’s been remarkable just how much a complete failure President Obama has been in achieving his platform. It won’t surprise me if Obamacare passes and takes him from being a complete failure to an ordinary failure.
But let’s assume for argument’s sake that Obamacare is a done deal. What then? Some are talking revolution. But notwithstanding the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence, revolution is something that has tradeoffs, and the case for it must be very strong even to consider it seriously. I don’t think we’re even close to that point, for no small reason that our position is far stronger than the major past attempts in our history. Now is the time to fight politically. Fight and win, politically. Not fight but keep a revolution in our back pocket, but commit ourselves to sweeping political victory with the same totality that the signers of the Declaration committed themselves to their own fight.
A revolution boils down to a simple choice: If you have enough strength to win, then you get your first shots to be Lexington. If you don’t, then you get your first shots to be Fort Sumter.
In the first example, the revolutionaries had no peaceful means to bring about change. They had no way of influencing the Parliament or the King through the British system of government at the time. In fact, the situation was so bad and London was so out of touch with America that the Parliament was raising taxes at an alarming rate and the King was sending foreign troops to shoot at us.
Our situation is nothing like that. In fact we had the Congress and the Executive as recently as 2005, and there’s nothing that prevents us from winning it all back should we inspire enough votes our way.
In the second example, that of the Civil War, we had just had an election, and the candidate of the would-be revolutionaries lost. They had a say, but they failed to win support. Lincoln’s “free soil” anti-slavery candidacy beat not only the compromise “popular sovereignty” of Douglas, but also the pro-slavery Breckenridge, and the ambiguously pro-compromise Bell.
The slavery movement also got beat in the Congressional elections, with Republicans going +31 in the House to end Democrat control of that body. Republicans also came into the Senate after 1860 with 6 more members than in 1856. (All figures here according to Wikipedia. Corrections welcome.)
That movement was doomed to failure through peaceful means because it did not have public support and could not win elections. In fact, the secessionists knew most of the country was against them. Do we actually think the country is against us? I don’t. I think if you ask the average TEA party goer they’ll tell you it’s not true at all, that the Democrats are going against their own constitutents in this fight.
Our position is so strong, and so well supported by the public, that aside from our chances of success, it’s just plain foolish for us to fold a strong political hand and threaten the stability of our nation. Democrats aren’t going to go +6 in the Senate. We might. The Democrats certainly aren’t going to go +31 in the House. Some analysts would say that’s a low end projection for what we’ll do year.
Our position is the exact opposite of that of the seceders in 1860, and even stronger yet than the revolutionaries of 1776. Let’s use our position of strength, take the Congress, and undo this monstrous bill without the need to fire a shot.