David Horowitz: Strategy for a GOP Victory

David Horowitz: Strategy for a GOP Victory

Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com
Friday, July 19, 2002

Editor's note: This is Part 3 of a review of David Horowitz's "How to Beat the Democrats: And Other Subversive Ideas."

Part 1: David Horowitz Reveals 'How to Beat the Democrats'
Part 2: How Democrats Undermined America's Security

"If you don’t come to the arena ready to fight a political war, the Democrats will. And they will win."

Those are the sobering words David Horowitz has for Republicans. And he has advice on how they can fight that war.

He repeatedly demonstrates that a war against Democrats is a bare-knuckled, no-holds-barred struggle. The Kennedys best expressed the Democrat view of politics when they declared, "Politics ain’t beanbag."

Horowitz begins his lesson in hard-nosed, effective politics by laying out what he calls the "Four Principles of Politics":

1. Politics is a war of emotions. People, he notes, vote on the basis of emotions, not on intellectual grounds. Their choices of candidates are based on "a gut decision."

"Political war is about evoking emotions that favor one’s goals. It is the ability to manipulate the public’s feelings in support of your agenda, while mobilizing passions of fear and resentment against your opponent."

He cites the Democrats’ shameful manipulation in the 2000 election of "millions of voters" to convince them that George W. Bush approved of lynching and dreamed of taking pensions from the elderly. And for many voters, it worked.

2. Politics is a war of position. If a majority of the voters see your party as the party of the people, "if you position yourself on their side – you will win."

The art of politics, he writes "is about getting a majority of voters to identify with you in their gut." Having good principles and a good image is fine, but attaching a bad image to your opponent is even better.

3. Politics is about fear. "To win in politics you must convince a majority of the voters that you are their friend," Horowitz writes. But on the other side of the coin, it’s almost as important to show that your opponent is their enemy.

"No matter how much Republicans deplore such tactics, no matter how fervently they wish that electoral contests would turn on good policies and good principals, it is not in their power to change the reality of political war. Anger fear and resentment are among the most potent weapons in the Democrat arsenal: resentment of success; anger at the Grinches who cheat the poor and steal old folks' pensions; fear of bigots and lynchers. These are the powerful forces that drive voters to the polls."

Horowitz cites as an example of this tactic the Democrats' abuse of "hate crimes" charges centering around the murder of an innocent black Texan, which they tried to lay at Bush’s door in ads because of his decision not to support a constitutionally dubious "hate crime" law.

The scheme worked. "After the ads had done their work, 92 percent of all African-Americans voted against George W. Bush." Democrats get away with such skulduggery because, Horowitz says, "they are adept at the war of position."

4. Politics is about hope. "Politics may be a war zone,’ Horowitz says, "but the winning issue is hope." Hope, he writes, "is the emotion that inspires people and wins political elections."

Noting that independent and swing voters, "the ultimate arbiters of elections," are not partisan, do not identify politics as a political struggle and can barely tell the difference between parties or candidates, Horowitz advises that voters want "leaders to govern them, rather than to lead them in battle."

Knowing your enemy is the most important factor in planning for a war. Horowitz pulls no punches when he explains just who the Democrat enemies are.

'Hijacked by Gangsters'

He quotes Patrick Caddell, a former pollster for George McGovern, Gary Hart and Jimmy Carter, as revealing: "I’m a liberal Democrat. I started in Florida politics. I worked for Jimmy Carter. I’ve worked for Ted Kennedy, Mario Cuomo. Nobody can question, I think, my credentials and my conviction. But I have to tell you … my party, the party that [my family has] belonged to since my great-great grandfather … has become no longer a party of principles but has been hijacked by a confederacy of gangsters who need to take power by whatever means and whatever canards they can."

Democrats, Horowitz says, have a deep left-wing orientation. "Their party apparatus feeds off the entitlements of the welfare state: social workers, university intellectuals, trial lawyers, government bureaucrats and government unions are all clients of the Big Government programs the party promotes."

He quotes what an ex-Democrat told the Wall Street Journal about Alexander Tyler’s cynical vision come true: "The fundamental motivation for the Democrats is their understanding that winning control of government is tied to paychecks, jobs, government grants, public money for private groups and companies, government contracts, union bargaining advantage, rules by which trial lawyers bring lawsuits … the use of government to feed friends and starve enemies is something Democrats know instinctively. Winning elections means getting or keeping a livelihood."

All of which explains why the Democrats are so desperate to win control of both houses of Congress.

Horowitz lays his cards on the table. "Marxism may be dead, but a Marxist morality play provides the ordnance for the Democrats’ political attacks. The rhetorical artillery of class, race and gender warfare put Republicans on the defensive and pins their forces down. Unless this attack from the left can be effectively blunted, Democrats will continue to have the advantage going into combat."

Next: How to Blunt the Democrat Advantage

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

DNC

George W. Bush

Presidential Race 2000

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David Horowitz shows `How to Beat the Democrats’