Immediately following Pearl Harbor, the US Navy could have appointed Admiral Cruz to lead the retaliation against Japan. He could have ordered every vessel and sailor, to steam straight west for Japan.
Seeing he was heading for disaster, a higher authority could have halted that fleet, to save them for when they were ready, and not doomed to certain destruction.
Fortunately during WWII we had wise commanders. Also when outnumbered, General Washington got the most from a bad situation, by cunning, strategy, patience etc.
A lot of willful denial going on these days.
Please, now: we're not at war, and the Tea Party did not bomb Washington. Nor was Mr. Cruz's effort intended as an "all-out assault", nor did it constitute a reckless or poorly-considered use of congressional authority. There is no level at which your analogy really works.
The bad situation is which we presently find ourselves exists not because of, but in spite of Mr. Cruz's efforts.
We have a Democrat Senate and President comprised of radical Progressives who refuse to compromise in any meaningful way. Their goal is democratic socialism, and they will not allow any reversal of the gains they have thus far made toward that end. Along with Democrat House members and Democrat constituent members, the party at present finds itself essentially united in its beliefs and purposes, even in spite of great differences in class and social standing as between Democrat leaders and their client groups.
For their part, the Republicans find themselves strongly divided between a definable class of permanent politicians, lobbyists, and consultants on one hand, and the set of constituent groups that comprise their base voters, on the other. Increasingly, these two sets of people have less in common in the way of either social standing, beliefs or purposes. In point of fact, they are growing apart.
GOP leaders tend to shun conflict, where their Democrat counterparts embrace it. The GOP base wants its leaders to fight for their principles, but they most often decline to do so. In part, this reticence is due to fear of the (very real) damage that can be done to them as a result of the modern control of all social institutions by Progressive liberals. But it is also due to a gradual shift on the part of GOP leaders, away from the beliefs and attitudes of their base voters.
Into this environment came a radical, transformative President, one given neither to self-doubt or compromise, but rather to conflict and intentional antagonism. Exploiting the growing rift between the GOP elites and their natural political base (which here I will describe roughly as a loose coalition of religious traditionalists, cultural activists, free-market libertarians, small business people and entrepreneurs, and white, suburban and exurban families), the President set about to mock and ridicule the attitudes and beliefs of these people while tying them to their leaders as though they were millstones.
The Tea Party was a natural reaction to the Democrats' legislative overreach and open hostility toward conservative values, but it also provided a convenient and visible bulls-eye for a Progressive President and his minions, all well-schooled in the teachings of Saul Alinsky: pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
And so, Obama's advisers employed a divide-and-conquer strategy not just between Americans, but specifically between Republican leaders and their own voters. It was and is, an audacious and clever move, knowing that many life-long Republican political figures have a good deal more in common - socially and attitudinally - with Washington
Democrats, than they do with the people who elected them. The result over time, and especially after 2010, has been to dishearten Republican base voters, while increasing their polarization from the people who represent them.
And so, into the fray stepped Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and others, in an effort to reverse the polarity of the current political dynamic - in the process, inviting their own electrocution. Anyone who thinks that what they are doing is in the pursuit of self-aggrandizement should ask themselves whether
they would be willing to subject themselves to the torrents of hatred, abuse, vitiol and public disdain that has been brought down upon them - for daring to stand up for the people that their fellow Republicans increasingly refuse to represent, or in some cases: really no longer
do represent.
And so the (Tea) party will go on...
