Again, I apologize for repeating things, but as events change things, we need to step back and take a look at just where we are, moving into the Fall, and the Winter of our discontent.
    The strategy seems clearer now, as does the mission of two very important classes of people; the Tea Party-9/12'ers and the Small business class, delat with in Part IV.

     My biggest concern, in the first part of this position paper, was to go over the problems "our army", to which myself and my colleagues belong (under our real names) are about to face in the political arena as we move through the winter. Barring some outlandish "event" from the government (we have several scenarios in mind, and suggest all of you collaborate with one another as to your own ideas), we are headed toward crucibles when the GOP will reach out wanting to bring us (back) under their umbrella and we enter the election cycle. If we can't get together on platforms and candidates, many GOP congressmen in what were once safe Republican districts will find themselves in tough (and acrimonious) primaries, in which the losing party is likely to do the teat-fit thing and sit out the generals.
    Since Bush's last term, the class distinctions within the GOP leadership have become palpable, centered around social-conservative issues such as right-to-life, but also demographic, urban-surburban versus small town and rural.
    Big-tent GOP Olympia Snowllins-like moderates envision a party not unlike the Democrats, many disparate, even antagonistic elements, coming together every political season to defeat a common opponent and then, splitting up the spoils for as long as they can hold power. To them politics is the end game, power the prize. As George Wallace once said, "not a dime's worth of difference", and in Meg Whitman's vision of quality, not an ounce's worth of distinction except as a method of branding. In other words, how do you make one of two nearly identical pieces of cheese more desirable to the consuming public? Name recognition. Great label. Better packaging. Affordable price. Still, rat cheese by any other name is still rat cheese.
    I know the problem anyone with passion for a cause, an idea, or a deep belief in one of those things bigger than ourselves...you know, Liberty, Honor, fundamental Good or Truth...has in trying to weave those notions into a political debate with an OSM (Olympia Snowllin moderate). Deer in the headlights. They have absolutely no connection to what you are talking about, except that in your group of two, one is a real dumb-arse...a point about which they are usually correct.
   They want our vote, but not our opinion. They want our money, but not our contributions. They want our supplications, but not our patronage. They invite us over for Thangsgiving dinner, but we sit at the fold-out card table over in the corner. We're the red-headed step child.
   In virtually every district in America, in every state GOP, this "class" battle is being played out, and has been played out since George W Bush was sworn in the second time. The complete collapse of OSM's demographic appeal in the 2006 midterms, and nationally in 2008 (which naturally they laid at the feet of Sara Palin) did nothing to deter them from believing in the ultimate rightness (sic) of their views, for they could never imaine a world, or a party, driven by ordinary men and women. And by "ordinary", I'm sorry, you guys who got rich in retail or industry and who are now funding much of the rebellion, they mean ordinary-at-birth. Much like John Kerry, many Republicans have their own dreams of bloodline.
   Wherever we may beat them in the primaries next year, they are nothing if not twice as capable of sucking their thumb in a corner as are conservative activists. They will stay home in the general, handing the district over to the Democrats.
   But I'm sorry to tell you this, Leftist "plotters and planners" (which is also what we do here at SICCM) already see this collision looming, explaining much of their disinterest in what we're doing now. They know we will collapse, one or the other of us, Rebels or OSM's taking our ball and glove and going home...yet again.
   As an old marriage counselor, I have to counsel you now: One of us has to be the adult. One of us has to have our gaze fixed firmly on the prize, while keeping our own counsel, as we first disptach the common enemy. This is the one thing the Left believes we (the Rebels) cannot do, for the simple fact that we believe in immutable things, which they consider to be liabilities in their world view of politics and power. Still, if they leave you (us) no option, and wish to move forward on a platform about which we cannot compromise, when in doubt, always take the high road.
    This position of majesty is the context in which the GOP will reach out, so gird yourself. Practice the phony smile, the limp handshake. Read Dumas. And for godsakes, learn to control your gag reflexes.
    We'd love to see the GOP reach out sooner, not later, but I doubt they take us seriously yet, despite the body blows we've delivered at Town Halls across the country this recess.The expected size of the turnout on 9/12 should also turn their heads. Whatever bruises Obama and the Democrats have now, and it's arguable they have any, we delivered them, not the GOP.
     (Watch Virginia, as the gubernatorial election here will give you all some insight as to the dynamics of how this outreach may play out in the 2010 cycle. So far I haven't seen any, although, but so far no national issues other then "Bush" have been on the table.)
     The first political hurdle, then, is getting past this first crossroads intact, and by "intact", I mean arm and arm with the Republican Party.
I know it's hard to hold your nose with both arms interlocked, so carry a clothespin. But we must win the political battle with the Left, and we must win sooner, not later. The Left has the political might, and present intent, to set us and the Constitution, and your children and grandchildren's prospects for freedom back sixty years. Politics is not the end game here, as many of you believe. It is the lynchpin that will allow us to shorten the culture war and the end game by perhaps forty years. Think of that in terms of the great grandchildren you will never know. Think about it.
     I know others have preached a third paty movement, but for one to succeed you have to build a base from the grass roots up in order to even get onto ballots, let alone win elections. That will take years, many election cycles and that will be too late. We aren't fighting a benign paper tiger, here. The prize, Colleagues. The prize.
    And besides, everything we have to do to get a third party off the ground we can do much more easily within the Republican Party simply by changing its face, and its soul, from within and from the bottom up. That can start right now, not several elections from now. For one, conservative congressmen can set up their own caucus right away. Already many of you are presenting congressmen with pledges and contracts. Good idea. Yeah, I know, they may lie, just as they did with the term limit pledge, but the fact they are still in office is our fault, not theirs. We didn't hold them to that promise. So maybe we need to begin getting pledges and contracts from ourselves. Remember the Apostles' Creed? (That's for those of you who read.) I carry one around in my wallet.
    (One note: I mention very little here the role of talk radio and popular conservative pundits such as Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin. For one (and we've made this lamentation before), they seem to be stuck on Politics, and more specifically the information part of politics, and less on action; i.e, "Now that I've told you these new and revealing things, what are you going to do with this information?" Now Glenn Beck has been behind the 9/12 Project, so he does seem to understand that knowledge alone won't fix anything, but I'm not sure where his vision fits into the larger fight.  We all know what the problem is. Saying it in new and different ways each day really doesn't move the ball down the fairway...except to give many people a false sense of security, sort of like the fellow who attends church each Sunday. They think they've paid their tithe that week. The real soldiers of the Rebellion are listening to the radio less and less, and that's because they simply don't have time. That's as it should be. You read, then put Levin's book, Beck's book, The 5000 Year Leap (super!) on the book shelf, tabbed and underlined, and you sit around and discus with others how you're going to put more boots on the ground. Politics and beyond are now at that stage. We didn't need Edward R Murrow reporting on the radio after Pearl Harbor. We were too busy planting Victory gardens and joining scrap drives. Get it?)

     Just so you'll know what lay ahead, in terms of time and effort, sit down to read this series, because you have to know you have to be in this for eight to ten years, just in the political phase. Not three. It will be long slog, so you have to "set your jaw for it", as Moses usd to say.
     This "take-over" of the republic and the scuttling of the Constitution has been in the planning stage for fifty years and execution stage for about nine years....since 2000 at least.  And it's been in the hoping stage since 1787. So, we can't take it back overnight.

     There are three fronts; the Political, the Institutional and the Cultural.
     The Political Front, the battle we are now fighting, is the lynchpin, for if we (the constitutional forces) can regain political control, and use that power to undo what has been done in this Congress, then we can shorten by a full generation, about forty years, the return of our culture to one of gratitude and fealty for this wonderful gift of freedom.
     But Politics is not the end game...regaining the Culture is...and there, except in our homes, we aren't even fighting that battle. This is why I have been so critical of so many "public" conservatives, especially in business, who really are defending little more than their own front doors. "Screw the neighbors" seems to be the very un-American rallying cry of many business conservatives these days.
    Only someone else did go after the neighbors, and now have them by the throat, and we find ourselves surrounded. As I wrote earlier, the rich can always move to New Zealand, but most of us have to reinforce our doors, shutter the windows with steel and put in firing slits in between the chinks in the logs. Bad thinking, all around, I'd say. The days when all you have to do is go out, work hard, play by the rules, and take care of your nest...and your elected leaders and the Constitution would take care of you...are long gone.
     The Institutional Fronts (in Part III), are especially 1) the bureaucracy, who our taxes feed, but who has all sorts of no-knock licenses to enter our homes, our bank accounts and our inner sanctums of life and 2) the schools, who with malice aforethought, try to unteach every value we impart to our children. They are the principal means by which we have to use the Political to regain the Culture. They are the means to Evil's ends in our lives, so they must likewise be the means to our rescue...by undoing them. (Don't worry, we know how to undo that, even if you don't. It's easy. Requires only willpower...and a steel jaw. And a greater sense of reciprocity to your neighbor.
     But the Culture (Part IV) exists outside the school system, or the long reach of federal, state, city and education  bureaucrats. It thrives mostly in the free market, our markets, where, by our constitutional standards, no law, but only the power of moral suasion and good sense can do battle...and win. The Pop Culture thrives on materialism, ingratitude, vanity, appetites, even narcissism (just Google the Seven Dealy Sins), and laziness. Its religion is self indulgence. We have to make virtue "cool" again.
     Even if we win all the political battles, we have to count on twenty years to reverse this current trend in Culture, especially among the youth, where we have to get to them young, and forbid the state to get to them at all. Try sixty years if we lose the political battles.
     We have included some suggestions that have been on our plate since the election, analyzing what may lay ahead. I address these suggestions you, the Rebels, but also to a different group of rebels, men and women who have so far remained rather quiet, but which I addressed in a previous talk in Georgia last month, for what this "cultural rebellion" requires is money and paid professionals.
     No, you won't be sending any to me. I'm not a TV preacher.

My End Game
     My end game here is to give advance warning to Town Hall-9/12 rebels already out there about the long fight that lay ahead. Don't think you can win this health care fight, or the 2010 elections then walk away...for the other side surely won't...and they have more money and are years ahead of us in planning. They already have a paid army.
     My end game here is also to forewarn you that when you come up to these crossroads that lay ahead in the near future, if beaten down or beaten back, 1) don't take your ball and glove and go home. You already know you have only 1) the choice to form your own political party, (a third party) then watch it and your movement waste away, or 2) reform the GOP from within. "Moderate" is a convenient term used by people who think politics is not only the end game, but the only game, and in that game you gather as many people as you can under one very small flag. Instead, gather yourselves under a huge flag, a banner of indestructible values as laid out in the Constitution, and common sense writ large by centuries of truth and proof, and the GOP will some day be yours...not the party of Ronald Reagan, but something infinitely better, a party that takes up where Reagan left off. Let those "moderates" form their own party, or fade away. But as is more likely, most will come over to your side...for you see, Courage feels good once tried, and most moderates are either class-based elitists (a few, who always lean Left), or are afraid to stand boldly under any banner for fear of being chastised or called out. I'm betting on the latter. Olympia Snowe is a milquetoast because she gets paid very well to be one. Her iffiness is justified every time she gets a campaign contribution, opens her pay envelope, or gets an "attagirl" from Barbara Boxer (Gad!). Still, I'd wager there are senses you all have tasted she'd give worlds to taste, especially that sensation of your nostrils flaring as you can feel your own spine stiffening. I'm serious. I've seen a board member's (of a large public corporation) hand tremble as he poured a congratulatory shot of Cutty Sark for having voted "no" (for the first time) at a board meeting. These are interesting studies and I've seen 'em.
    Many moderates will feel good once they've tried on the cloak of courage. Like a good Scotch, "Good" tastes so much better when not diluted with branch water...or "attagirls" from Barbara Boxer.
    Just don't hand any more elections to the Left because you don't like that snotty person who tries to take over every meeting. What band parent hasn't known them? Stand up. Be heard.
    2) Win or lose in the national elections, you have to turn that energy back to local and state issues. That's where you will confront the institutional roadblocks; the school systems, the NEA, political correctness, and city hall careerists, from housing inspectors to ward heelers. That is where you can save up to 20% of your state's budget no matter who your district sends to Congress. That's where you can take back your schools, and your universities...and the NEA be damned. That's where you can improve the quality of readin', 'riting and 'rithmatic without either the help or permission the Department of Education, and where you can reduce the high cost of college educations by the simplest of formulas...firing people, and firing the people who won't fire people. That's where, in ten years you will find a governor and several congressmen, none of whom are currently on any GOP "Watch" Or "Up-and-Coming" list. As these people grow in politics it's your job to make sure their heads don't grow proportionately. Then, the Party will be yours.
      You will learn, just as the Founders told us, the greatest duty, and the greatest virtue of citizenship, is vigilance...and steel toed boots.
Part III coming soon.
Vassar Bushmills