I have said this many times before, but never with the sincerity or the gravity that I say it now – the political divide is beyond repair. There is not one inch of common ground left to compromise, reach agreement, or move forward on, and that fact is in full display with this election cycle. Recently, one progressive divulged his understanding, or lack thereof, of conservatism by characterizing it as an ideology that oppresses minorities and lacks empathy. Sadly, that pretty much sums up the progression of most progressives current political knowledge. It also lines up perfectly with the administrations childish characterizations of the political opposition, which should surprise no one. There is not one effort by this administration, or any current elected Democrat, to debate on substance, nor has there ever been. There are only incessant attacks on the personal character and motives of conservatives. On every domestic and foreign front, the progressive policies that they champion are proving to be abysmal failures, leaving personal mischaracterizations as the only arena in which they have left to do battle in. Donald Lambro over at Townhall has a good article here, and the following is an excerpt:

“Instead of talking about incentives to boost job-creating capital investment and business expansion, Obama and the Democrats talk only about fairness, gender equality, employer health care mandates, and making businesses and wealthier people pay “their fair share.” With his party facing its toughest election challenges in years, “and burdened with persistently high unemployment, Obama is playing the race, gender and class cards.”

There will be no cards left unturned this year by the Democrats, and the tone of the progressive anger will only be dialed up as we get closer to November and their prospects of losing power become more and more real. They are desperate to hold onto power, and absent any real achievement in foreign or domestic policy, they will become more unhinged, more desperate, and more vile in their attacks, as recently witnessed by Harry Reid and his obsession with the Koch Bros., and calling average Americans “domestic terrorists”. In my opinion, it’s important that conservatives allow this progressive anger and disdain for America to be on full display everyday, and possibly even encourage it. However, it’s even more important to offer mature, common sense alternatives to economic expansion and opportunity, healthcare access and reform, and foreign policy. Considering the childish nature of their policies, scripting common sense alternatives is the easy part. Finding someone to articulate those policies and have them resonate with a poorly educated populace is another matter.

Churchill once said that if Hitler had invaded hell, he would have made at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.  That was to put it a bit extreme, of course, but Churchill was trying to point out the gravity of the situation.  There wasn’t anything more important for him – and his country – at that time then fighting off Hitler and in service of that goal, he was willing to put up with quite a lot he didn’t actually like.  While we, as a people, are not at death grips with a threat as imminent as that, we are confronted today with an existential threat to our nation – namely, an extreme leftist Democrat party under Barack Obama determined to “fundamentally transform” America.  And its not like they are willing to use truth and rational argument, nor are they in any sense concerned about the legality of their actions.  They are determined to have their way – convinced, of course, that eventually we’ll all love the result.  The trouble is that a republic cannot survive long if the people in charge of it cease to obey the laws – that is what ultimately killed the Roman republic; political leaders determined to have their way simply ignored the law and did what they wished…bribing the people to acceptance with bread and circuses (sound familiar?).  Obama is no dictator – but what he is doing is ensuring that we’ll eventually get one, if we don’t stop this course of action.  And doing that takes winning political victories in 2014 and 2016.

As long time readers know, I am not at all a fan of the GOP establishment.  I do consider them too tight with the corrupt, Big Government/Big Corporation crony-capitalist elite.  But here’s the thing:  there are strong indicators that ObamaCare is causing an implosion of support for liberal Democrats all across the nation.  The political landscape has a very definite 2010ish feel about it.  But here’s the thing – if we go about demanding absolute political purity then we will blow this opportunity.  We must, of course, elect the most conservative candidate possible – but some times that will wind up being someone who is of a RINOish bent.  Now is not the time for political purity, but for all patriots to rally to the defense of their nation.  If we don’t win over 2014 and 2016, then the story of our nation is probably told.  If we don’t stop the rot – what Obama calls the “fundamental transformation” of this nation – then we will eventually go financially and morally bankrupt and, probably, break up in to a series of small republics, easy prey to the rising powers in the world.

Given that Obama and any possible Democrat successor to him will continue to just break the law as necessary in order to advance their leftwing ideology, it fundamentally doesn’t matter who we put in to office, as long as they will at least obey the laws.  This is the crucial moment – this is where we decide, finally, whether the notion of popular government is rational or absurd.  We went through this once before in the Civil War and determined that a people can govern themselves against an attempt to break up the nation – now we need to find out if people can govern themselves against an attempt by the government to break the laws.

As this is the case, it is not time to be hammering on Boehner, McConnell or other GOP leaders.  Go ahead and be mad about the recent approval of  the debt limit hike – that plus $5 will get you a cup of coffee…and, in the long run, a government which will do whatever the whim of the President is at the moment.  The GOP leaders see that the political landscape is favorable to the Republican party as long as we don’t give the Democrats a way out of the ObamaCare box.  ObamaCare, my friends, is the failure of liberalism writ large.  Usually these Big Government boondoggles take decades to reach total failure, and so people get used to them and the only proposals made about them are to tinker at the edges.  But ObamaCare is such a manifest failure in the lives of real people, right now, that it can’t be excused or explained away…and Obama is walking right in to a trap by refusing to countenance any legislative modifications to the law – the tinkering around the edges which would give at least an appearance of success.  Obama has always been arrogant and stupid but he managed to weave his way through because the MSM simply lied to protect him and, additionally, the American people were more than willing to give our first black President all sorts of leeway (the overwhelming majority really wanted him to be a success…not for his sake, but for the sake of the nation).  ObamaCare will crush the Democrats this fall and in 2016 – and will crush the liberal ideal that government can solve problems – provided we allow it to happen.  Give the Democrats something else to talk about (anything else…right now, they’d love to have a Select Committee on Benghazi created…anything to get the subject off of the failure of liberalism as personified in ObamaCare) and they will be able to get out of the box and perhaps stave off electoral disaster.

To be sure, to secure the full victory we need, the GOP will have to run good campaigns in 2014 and 2016.  This will not fall in to our laps – and the Democrats will break every law necessary and cheat like mad in order to deny us victory.  This is still a massive, political battle.  We do need to come forth with a series of policy proposals – but our most important thing to do, especially in 2014, is just to keep hammering on ObamaCare.  It is deeply unpopular.  It isn’t working.  It passed with almost no GOP votes (I believe there was one GOPer in an extremely blue district in Louisiana who voted for it in 2010).  It is the Democrats’ failure through and through – and absent major, legislative modification (which Obama won’t go for), it simply will not get better all through 2014, and looks to just get worse in 2015 and 2016.  Added to this increasing anxiety about the state or the world, an economy still bottomed out from the 2009 recession and increasing fear and hatred generated by Democrat hate-mongers, and we’ve got the ingredients for a major electoral shift.  Unless we blow it.  Unless, that is, we decide that being politically pure and in the political minority is better than compromising as necessary and securing political power.  And don’t forget that we have our con artists – not nearly as many as the Democrats, but there are players out there on our side who simply want to generate attention and donations for themselves and who don’t give a damn about the country…they will play the siren song of political purity, in order to aggrandize themselves.

We can win this.  We can stop the rot.  We can, over the next two decades, reform our nation back in to something resembling what the Founders intended…but our first step is to get the Democrats out of power.  If they have power, they will stop us from doing anything – they must lose it all; House, Senate, White House.  Eye on the prize, good people.

Our liberals feel that they are on the side of history – that things always go their way in the long term and that the United States is certain to eventually be a social democratic nation.  Perhaps, but it does seem there are some bumps on the way:

The Democratic Party’s biggest super PAC, recently retooled as an early pro-Hillary Clinton effort, will sit out the midterm elections this year.

A spokesman with the group, Priorities USA Action, confirmed to BuzzFeed on Wednesday night that it would not be involved in House or Senate campaigns.

“House Majority PAC and Majority PAC are doing everything right and making a real difference. We fully support their efforts,” said the spokesman, Peter Kauffmann, referring to the main groups supporting Democratic congressional candidates.

Priorities USA, which operates under loose campaign finance rules that allow it to raise and spend unlimited sums, put $65 million behind Barack Obama in 2012…

This, as VP Biden would say, is a “big f’ing deal”.  It is an essential surrender on a large part of the Democrat money machine.  They are giving up on 2014 and setting their sights on 2016.  And there is a certain logic in this – with Obama increasingly unpopular and heading for his second mid-term, a wipe out of the Democrats was always possible.  But Democrats have learned something under Obama – as long as you’ve got the White House and one house of Congress, you can do as you please.  Just write all the executive orders you want, refuse to pass a budget and live on continuing resolutions which allow the President to move money around pretty easily to whatever is the cause of the day for Democrats.  Democrats are confident (with reason, it should be said) that they can get Hillary in to the White House…and, given the electoral map of 2016, reasonably confident that even if they lose the Senate in 2014, they can win it back in 2016 (and thus Reid has already signaled his intent to run for -re-election that year).  This is just hard nosed, political reality coming in here.

But it also means the GOP can win big – and that can set the stage for us to win in 2016, as well.  It’ll be an interesting couple years.