A Strategic Framework For Conservative Activists

Every conservative political activist needs to have a strategic framework in mind to maximize his/her effectiveness. I’ll tell you about my strategic framework. You are more than welcome to adopt it or improve upon it.

The Context

Individual liberty restrained by morality is the pinnacle of political/legal philosophy. Anything else is worse, usually much worse.

Our country’s liberty and morality are deliberately being destroyed from within by Marxists and their “useful idiot” allies. If you are unfamiliar with Marxism, suffice it to say that in the souls of many there burns an infinite desire to order others about, and to punish those who do not comply. Add a veneer of compassion to this insanity and we call it liberalism or leftism or progressivism. This liberalism dominates the Democrats and has infiltrated the Republicans.

Counter Strategies

Among our opponents’ strategies is to assault us in thousands of ways per year. One effect is to make it unlikely that conservative activists will choose to fight the right fights. When we do fight the right fights, we find people and political resources have been divided in a thousand directions.

The counter strategy for conservative activists is to make good choices about where to concentrate resources and efforts. The following guidelines should help keep activists on track.

Stay On Offense

You might win a battle on defense, but you can never win a war on defense. A defensive political action by definition leaves one’s opponents intact. Leaving the leftist machine intact is inadvisable because any ground gained may be lost later.

Financially Starve The Leftist Political Machine

Power wielded by the left is wildly disproportionate to their numbers. Genuine liberals are about 20% to 25% of the population, but they exercise approximately half the political power in this country.

Money is essential to persuading non-leftists to vote for leftist candidates. There are paid union “volunteers” working for leftist candidates, and large leftist contributions are made to campaigns and causes. Without this money the leftist machine collapses. Much of the left’s money comes from unions, lawyers and people with government jobs.

Remove Leftists From Positions Of Power And Influence

They have infiltrated our churches, schools, universities, governments, media outlets, and many influential professions. Practically any organization of significant size or influence that has not been specifically founded to be conservative will be targeted for takeover by leftists. Identify them and remove them.

Shrink The Government

A particular strain of neoconservative thought holds that we should just put good people in office and not worry about the size of government. This idea was put to the test in the George W. Bush administration. It was a failure in at least 2 ways. First, those years were a time when the left flourished. Second, the growth of government during those years expanded the apparatus for the left to use against our nation when Obama took over and put many thousands of malicious left-wing cronies into positions of authority in the federal government.

Utilize Partial Solutions

It is far easier to build a coalition behind a partial solution than it is to build a coalition to support a comprehensive solution.

Two Examples

The first example is one of the best policy trends to appear on the American political scene in recent decades. The requirement that a voter show a photo I.D. is strategically brilliant politics. It is politics on offense. It has great potential to starve the left, remove leftists from power, and shrink government. It is a simple, partial solution to the voter fraud problem. Approximately two-thirds of the states have passed this policy, putting leftists in the federal government on defense. And they are defending badly. The often-repeated argument that photo I.D. laws are racist would laughable if the federal government were not serious.

The second example is from the abortion battles here in South Dakota. In 2006 and 2008 there were ballot measures which would have banned almost all surgical abortions in our state. As moral and practical policies it is clear they should have passed. How do these ballot measures hold up from a strategic political perspective? Were they politics on offense? No, strictly defensive. Would they have impacted the left’s finances, removed leftists from power, shrunk the government? Not really. Were they partial solutions? No, they were nearly comprehensive, which is one of the reasons they lost at the ballot box. My suggestion is that activists collapse the left first, and the other issues such as abortion and gun rights will be rectified in the aftermath of the collapse.

Conclusion

It is my belief that policies meeting the above criteria will build on each other. Next year I hope to put together a simple ballot measure making it illegal for South Dakota’s governments to deduct union dues from government workers’ paychecks. I will need a great deal of help from the public to get it done. I won’t argue the merits now, but I hope that in coming years this policy change will be seen as satisfying all of the above criteria. 

***Brian Liss is a South Dakota State Representative***