The Difference Between Tactics & Strategy

by JASmius

Patience is not one of the Tea Party's virtues.  In war, decisiveness can be an advantage; when one's enemies make the mistake of wasting a moment on taunting, one can use those precious slivers of time to seize the initiative.

But politics is not war.  In the former, you learn patience, or you lose everything you stand for.

The disastrously premature Ted Cruz-led shutdown showdown should have taught the Tea Party the difference between tactics and strategy.  In the grander scheme of political conflict, what matters is knowing when not to act - when to bide one's time, wait for the enemy to make a mistake, maneuver for advantage, and avoid an unwinnable confrontation.  Political battles often are won or lost before their first "shots" are fired.  The key to survival is learning how to tell the difference between a lost cause and a call to glory before committing oneself to the fray.

Had Senator Cruz learned this lesson beforehand, he'd have known that public opposition to ObamaCare was a mile wide and an inch deep, that the only way to truly turn the American people against the Unaffordable Care-Less Act was for it to take effect.  And since Republicans didn't have the numbers or power to stop it, the best strategy was to hold their fire by passing a short-term "clean" continuing resolution and wait to pull the trigger on a shutdown confrontation.

Imagine how differently that showdown would have unfolded.  There's no way in hell Democrats would have remained united in defense of ObamaCare.  A blanket delay would almost have been a given, and defunding might actually have become a serious possibility.  Even repeal wouldn't have been completely out of the question.

Instead, Senator Cruz forced the shutdown too soon, the Democrats crushed it, and now, when the gambit could actually have worked, there was no stomach for a sequel, and the Sequester has been eroded as well.

Which is why it is so dismaying to see Ted Cruz ranked, according to Rasmussen, as the fourth most influential person of 2013.  Or maybe not, since "influential" equates to "famous" or "prominent" without respondents necessarily knowing the underlying reasons for it.  Regardless, to the degree that he is influential, famous, or prominent, it ought to be the for the same reason as the fame of General George Armstrong Custer, another incompetent leader who led his forces into an ignominious defeat. 

Which makes it all the more ironic that it is the ObamaCare cataclysm itself that is the Texas junior senator's saving grace, as it will motivate voters (assuming any more elections are permitted) to do what he couldn't - oust the Democrats from power in the Senate and set the stage for a clean sweep in 2016 that will take O-Care with it.

Or O will pull his coup and that will be that.

I wonder if Senator Cruz has spent much time in the Alamo.