I really love a great quote - whether it's Martha Washington reminding us that the greater part of our happiness depends on our predispositions rather than our circumstances or Keynes's astute observation that, in the long run, we're all dead. But of all my favorite quotes, two stand above the rest. The first one is in my sig. The other is what I call Napoleon's Law, named for the diminutive general who coined it:
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
There are so many awesome things about this quote. The deliciously Machiavellian undertone. The way the rule is so intuitively obvious, yet so easy to forget, because human nature has us wanting to attack, attack, attack, especially when we think we have the other guy on the ropes (which is when most mistakes are made). And of course, there is the brutal irony that Napoleon was himself defeated because the Russian army followed that rule to a T and lured him into a preposterously stupid march right into the teeth of the Russian winter.
And so, as I sit and watch the Republican Party go flying off the deep end and into political irrelevance, which, I might hasten to add, is one of the most deeply and thoroughly satisfying experiences of my entire life, I beg of you, my well-intentioned netroot activist friends, do not interfere.
What do I mean? Well, first of all, Operation Hilarity is a mistake, which is unfortunate, because it's name is awesome. I'm not saying this because of some ethical dilemma - we've got more than a long way to go to catch up to those bastards when it comes to subverting the democratic process, and the goal of Operation Hilarity is much closer to electoral vandalism than it is to election thievery. It's a prank, a shenanigan, and I love a good shenanigan. But here's the problem - there is no way to get enough Democratic voters out to the polls to rock the boat without alerting Republican primary voters. And if enough of them start thinking, "if the Democrats really want Mitt Romney beaten so badly, maybe I should be supporting Mitt Romney", then not only will we end up helping Romney win primary votes, but we'll be helping him shore up the support of the base in the worst possible way - by getting them to come to him, not the other way around (remember, the Republican base is obsessed with hating us). And since the number of primaries where registered Democrats can't vote is far greater than the number where we can, well, it's hard to see how this isn't a net negative for us. The GOP base is doing a fine job of rejecting Mitt Romney by themselves. Do not interfere.
Here's another example. As you may have heard, Rush Limbaugh recently made some rather odious comments about women in general, and one woman, a Sandra Fluke, in particular. What he said was so patently offensive, as well as creepy and pathetic, that he is permanently poisoning the words "conservative" and "Republican" in the minds of millions of women. And so the reaction from the left is to organize a boycott of his sponsors, in an attempt to force him to take back his comments, or God forbid, get him off the air? Really? What's the end game here? Say Limbaugh loses a few sponsors, and has to come out and say something like, "last week I got carried away and said some things I shouldn't have said. I walk a fine line to keep my audience entertained, but this time I crossed that line. I apologize to Ms. Fluke." Now, he gets off easy, and Republicans get to distance themselves from his comments without repudiating him. This is not the time to get Limbaugh to backpedal, this is the time to get him to keep going. To lure him deep into the Siberian wilderness.
http://www.youtube.com/...
That's the video of the "post the videos so we can all watch" quote. By all means, e-mail it to every woman you know. Tell them to e-mail it to all the women they know. That's the action that needs to be taken, here. A viral video campaign. But please, do not make Rush Limbaugh think that there is a financial penalty for driving women into the Democratic tent.
(Ok, I can hear the objection now: but Ms. Fluke deserves an apology! No, she doesn't. She deserves way more than that, and she will get way more, when her slander suit is settled. I think a Georgetown law student with a high profile case like this won't have too much difficulty finding a good lawyer.)
And while we're talking about bad ideas regarding the Limbaugh/Fluke situation, please cease all efforts to get Republican politicians, especially the presidential candidates, to publicly denounce Limbaugh's comments. That would be the smart thing to to, so why would we demand that they do it? What we need to be doing is putting pressure on them to defend those comments - or, if not the comments themselves, at least Limbaugh in general. So get on your e-mail machines! The Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, and Paul campaigns need to hear from YOU! And how concerned you are that a good man like Limbaugh is getting destroyed by the elite media liberal character assassination machine. How, as a true conservative, you are appalled by this attack on free speech, and how you may very well base your upcoming decision this spring at least in part on who stands with the man who defines the word conservative during his current period of hardship. Tell Mittens & AssJuice you're from Ohio, tell Newt you're from Tennessee. But whatever you do, make no attempt to get them to denounce Limbaugh's comments. That they haven't done so already is a godsend. Keep them going into the forest.
Newton's (Isaac, not Gingrich) second law of motion tells us that a Republican acting stupidly tends to keep acting stupidly, unless acted on by some outside force. Don't be the outside force. The Repubs are in a hole, and they're trying to dig their way out. Don't offer them a ladder - throw them a shovel.
PS - stop talking about the "Blunt Amendment", and start talking about the "Blunt-Rubio Amendment". This shit is toxic, and if we can hang it around Golden Boy Rubio's neck his political career will be over faster than you can say "Bobby Jindal's State of the Union rebuttal."