Mark America

Every Reason to Fight

At the Ted Cruz rally at The Woodlands on Friday, Governor Palin made mention of a candidate who hasn’t been getting  a great deal of national attention, but who deserves the support of conservatives and Tea Party folk everywhere.  One of the things her remarks made clear is that too often, we surrender supposed “blue” states on the basis that we should not waste our precious resources campaigning in places that have been written-off as simply too far gone.  Governor Palin is right about this, and going back even to 2008, when she wanted to spend some time in Michigan, but the McCain Campaign had decided it was not worth the effort, Governor Palin has never been one to cede anything to the left, leaving them a victory by default. In fact, this is what has made her so precious to many on our side, because it is this unrelenting fighting spirit that we have often lacked.  It’s been the habit of the GOP establishment to write-off such places, but she’s right:  We must fight for every one.  In her speech on Friday, she mentioned a candidate for Senate in the State of Maryland, a deep, deep blue state in which mathematically, no victory should ever be possible for a Republican, never mind a conservative, but maybe that’s our problem.  Perhaps we abandon the men and women like Dan  Bongino too easily, and maybe that’s why we seem to be perpetually on the defensive.

We fight over our “Red” states, and some “battleground” states, and we walk away from “blue” states because it just seems so impossible, but we must ask at some point: Is it?  Is it really impossible to deliver a message of freedom and liberty and the vast potential that is the America we love to all her people?  More, aren’t we committing a grave moral error when we abandon the people of those states as veritable Don Quixotes, damned forever to tilt at the windmills of a hopeless political imbalance in their states?  Yes, I am fortunate enough to live in a “red” state, but then again, I am actually a transplant from a “blue” state via a “battleground” state and my service in the Army.  The reason I decided together with my wife to remain in Texas two decades ago is because I looked at the increasingly hopeless prospects of the states in which I had spent my youth, and decided there could be no way I would willingly damn my young family by dragging us back there.

The problem is what Mark Levin likes to point out, likening the left to a swarm of locusts: Once they strip a place and make of it an economically barren and politically devastated wasteland, they move on to more promising areas, turning them each in their turn to the sort of disaster they had created on their previous stops.  I often meet folk who have come to Texas from other places around the country, and some of them ask me how I have adapted to Texas.  My response is always the same: “Don’t try to make Texas into the same sort of place you had left behind, but instead make yourself into a Texan.”  Many of them are taken aback at the notion, and they ask me what I mean, and I explain to them that so many come here from deep blue or battleground states, arriving here to set about the business of turning Texas into what they fled, never stopping to consider the insanity of the notion.  Why would one try to recreate here the very things one has so recently escaped?

Another problem we face is that in leaving these “blue” states to the left, not only are we abandoning some of our most stubborn brethren, who refuse to be run-off from their homes, and who fight tooth and nail for every inch of political ground, but we are also rejecting our own thesis with respect to warfare, whether real or political.  You see, one of the things we conservatives have acknowledged vis-à-vis the war on terror is that for the sake of our country’s safety, it is far better to fight the thugs and terrorists and tyrannical despots on their ground, rather than waiting for them to arrive here, on ours, because naturally, given the time, they will attack us at home. By our failure to contest ‘blue’ states, they needn’t spend any time or effort defending their own ground, because we don’t press our attack there any longer, leaving them free to go on the offensive in every red precinct in the country.

As I have explained before, our political strife in this country is a war, in fact, restrained for the moment to the sphere of politics, but the strategies employed are no different.  Governor Palin mocked Barack Obama for suggesting that Texas would be a blue state, and for the time being, that’s true, but as her words also warned, the only thing preventing that from coming true over the longer run is us.  If we permit the GOP establishment and all the Austin cronies to turn Texas to their purposes, and if we don’t begin to fight the radical left, not only in Texas, but in places like Maryland too, we are going to slowly lose.

It is stunning to think that only a generation ago, California voted for Ronald Reagan, the most conservative president of my lifetime, and perhaps the lifetimes of most Americans still living.  Conservatives don’t seem able to win in California any longer, and it is the locust-like nature of the left, combined with our own unwillingness to battle them that explains the problem.  We ceded that ground, as we have ceded New York, Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, Massachusetts and a number of others.  We’ve simply walked away.  We’ve effectively said “tough luck, we’re saving our own skins” to our conservative brethren in those states, leaving them to grasp at the last straws of their political and economic freedoms, yet we wonder why we see the left infiltrating those places that had been our great strongholds.  There had been a time not so long ago when places like Virginia or North Carolina would never have been in question.  Now?

Ladies and gentlemen, as I write this post, I am re-watching at the video of Dan Bongino, linked by Governor Palin on her Facebook page, and I want you to see this too. Here is the video, and at its end, he makes the same point:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf78iOXx1wY]

Here is a man who is fighting like Hell for the last bit of logic and the last bit of sanity remaining in his state, and when you hear his passion, and when you see the fire in his belly, I want to ask all of you, my conservative brethren, most of us ensconced in deep red territory, how is it that we walk away from fighters like this man, abandoning them to a hopeless battle in which we had surrendered the flanks:  Is he not championing precisely the things in which we believe?   Like many of my readers, and like Gov. Palin, I’m not much inclined to give anything to the left, and I’m certainly not of a mind to leave such a man standing alone, speaking the truth in a state in which, without our help, he will never be heard over the din of the locusts.  It’s time we do something about that, and being conservatives, our country and our culture under attack on all fronts, there is no time like the present.  We shouldn’t wait for somebody else to rescue us, because if we don’t do it, none will.  If you’re in Maryland, go help get this guy elected, and if you’re not in Maryland, contribute to that effort any way you can.  Start here.  Then, let’s fight the left everywhere.  All we’re doing at present is “holding onto our positions,” but we’re not advancing the war by pressing our assault on their leviathan.  It’s time to change the formula.  It’s time to make the case.  It’s time for us to reinforce our flanks, but surge and break through at the front.  This is total war, waged for now in words and votes, but if we fail to engage on all fronts, we will lose the country.