A few years back I read "The Art of Political War; How Republicans Can Fight to Win" By David Horowitz.  For the most part this is something I wrote then during a New Jersey Senate Campaign.  I believe it is still valid today.

    I was convinced then and I am still convinced that Mr. Horowitz makes some good points.  My understanding of Mr. Horowitz's history is that he was formerly a Radical and a long time Democrat. More recently he has become a Conservative. He knows how the leftists think and that is what makes his views valuable.  I believe that Republicans everywhere could learn something from Horowitz.  I'd like to highlight some points for discussion.

Horowitz starts out by describing what he calls the Six Principles of Political Warfare.

1. Politics is war conducted by other means

2. Politics is a war of position

3. In political wars the aggressor usually prevails

4. Position is defined by the opposing emotions of fear and hope.

5. The weapons of politics are symbols that evoke fear and hope

6. Victory lies on the side of the people

Politics is war by other means.

    The goal according to Horowitz is not just to prevail in a given argument, but to destroy the enemy's ability to fight.  We Republicans often act like we are responding to issues in a debate while the Democrats have no such preconceptions.  In a debate you have to have time to develop the argument to be effective.  With 30-second sound bites we have no such time.  You must focus what on what you can get across in the time allotted.

Politics is a war of position.

    The goal of politics is to define yourself as a friend of as large a constituency as possible compatible with your principles, while defining your opponent as their enemy whenever and wherever possible.  Horowitz likens this to choosing the terrain of battle.  He cautions that you must be careful not overstep the process of defining your enemy less you become viewed as mean-spirited, nasty or too judgmental.   The key point for me is that you must define the issues and your position.  Do not let your opponent do so.

The third point is that offense most often wins the war.

    The sooner you go on offense the better.  Offense allows you to define the issues. Horowitz cautions again about going negative on an opponent, but also shows how Democrats have used this tactic successfully.  The major issue is that the Republicans fail to respond rapidly and adequately to Democrat accusations.

Position is defined by fear and hope. 

    To me, this was a very important principal because it points out the critical importance of emotions in a political campaign.  Although I get very emotional about certain issues I tend to argue my cause by logic.  While Horowitz says that of the two emotions, hope is the better choice; his supporting examples show how the Democrats played upon the fears of the electorate to tar opponents with a fear factor.  He used the Clarence Thomas case and the Moral Majority to show how Democrats used fear in their campaigns.  He pointed to ‘the importance of symbolism” in defining a position.  This leads to the next section.

The weapons of politics are symbols that evoke fear and hope.

    Horowitz points out that Republicans have come across or been portrayed as hard-edged, uncaring, or sanctimonious.  Whether or not this is a result of a liberal news media is irrelevant.  We have to live with that.  You must first be able to convince people that you care about them before they will listen to what you say.  Remember that you will only have a sound bite, 30 seconds or so, in which to do this. 

·         Whatever you say must be said loud and clear. 

·         Keep it short and repeat it often.  

·         Do not clutter up the medium with too many messages because that dilutes the potential. 

    The Democrats have certain messages they always use such as "Tax breaks for the Rich at the expense of the poor."  It doesn't matter that the message is crap.  If you repeat it often enough and it sticks.  We have to have our own messages like that.

Victory lies on the side of the people. 

    The bottom line here is that you craft your message in such a way that people can identify with you.  Give people hope in your victory and fear of your opponent’s victory.  The Democrats play this card with such hypocrisy.  They, according to their message, are the party of the poor and down-trodden, of the working-class, and we are the party of the Rich and Powerful who don't give a dam about the rest of us.  We, on the other hand have no countervailing arguments, or no effective one that I am aware of.

This then leads to certain prescriptions by Horowitz. 

1. 1.      We must frame the issues of the campaign and do so on the basis of the emotions of hope and fear, not on logic.
2. 2.      We must be ready to respond effectively should the Democrats try any demagoguery.  To be effective in our response we need to be able to portray it for what is, e.g. a negative campaign launched for no other reason.  
3. 3.      As Democrats have done, it may also be useful to play the victim.  Horowitz showed how we failed to do this when Newt Gingrich was attacked in Congress and how Hillary has done it so well.

My choices for framing issues on the basis of hope and fear:

·   “If you believe that you know better how to run your life than do the bureaucrats in Washington or Trenton, then vote Republican.”

·   “This election is really about power, who has it and who doesn’t.  If you think you should be the one making decisions for your life then vote Republican.”

·   “It is a well known phrase that money is power.  Look to the election and decide for yourself who would take more of it out of your pocket.”

·   The Democrats would have you believe that they are like Robin Hood, taking money from the Rich and giving to the poor, when in truth they are more like the Sheriff of Nottingham, taking from rich and poor alike.

·   Does anyone truly believe that adding a middleman in Washington is an effective or efficient way of funding local spending?

·   “The power of government is the power to use coercive force. It is at best a dangerous servant and can be a fearsome master. To avoid tyranny it must be carefully controlled and limited in scope. It is best used close to the point of application.  Republicans favor local and non-governmental solutions first, and then State level solutions, then and only then National action.”

·   A vibrant and active community does not come from a government pocket book, but from the individual activity of the community’s inhabitants.  The role of government should be to support that private and voluntary activity by lowering the barriers to participation.  Lower taxes, a Republican strong point is one method of doing this.  Giving tax credits for charitable contributions is another.

·   The right to keep and bear arms is the right to self-defense.  No police department, no government is strong enough to protect all of us all the time.  Nor would we want such a powerful government, because of the inherent dangers of abuse.  Republicans will protect the individual’s right to protect himself while ensure that those who abuse that right are truly punished.  As a point of fact, those societies where law abiding citizens are more highly armed, are the societies with the lowest violent crime rates.  Gun ownership by law abiding citizens, rather than inciting anarchy, as some Democrats would have you believe, stabilizes a society making it self policing.

·   Democrats endanger parental rights by taking decision-making power away parents. With Democrats in control you have no control of how or where your children are educated, unless of course you are Rich. (So much for their claim to be the party of the common man.) With Democrats in control your only means of controlling where your child will learn is by means of moving your home, something not easily done on a limited income.  With Democrats in control you cannot readily effect a change when you disagree with the powers that be when some bureaucrat makes a policy decision you do not like.  The actions of a single parent or even a small group of people have little effect on school policy.  If, however, school choice were implemented as favored by many Republicans, parental power will be magnified tenfold. The sheer power of a parent to take the money and stick it elsewhere will make rigid bureaucrats more amenable to reason. Market factors will increase educational choice.  Weak or failing schools will be driven out of business while strong schools will flourish.  The quality of education will rocket to new heights and no one will be trapped in a failing school.

·   If all life is sacred then why do so many Democrats favor abortion and oppose capital punishment?  Are their priorities screwed up?  They will fight to save a fish, but not a human baby.

·   If Democrats get their way much of Mother Nature will be off limits to mankind.

·   Democrats would keep us dependent on foreign sources of energy. Republicans will work toward energy independence.

New for 2008:

·   It is a fact of life that wars continue until one side or the other loses the will to fight; the side that loses their will to fight loses the war.  In Iraq, the Democrat leadership has demonstrated that they do not have the will to fight, so if they are in control then we will lose the war.

I don’t know how well this argument would work well, but I put it out here for consideration:

·   When you hear a Democrat telling you that the Republicans are for “tax cuts for the rich” just remember your biblical training, if you have any.  The tenth commandment says that “Thou shall not covet…”; this is exactly what the these Democrats would have you do.  They covet and they want you to covet somebody else’s wealth.  Whether your neighbor is wealthy or not does not give you the right to take their property in any greater or lesser proportion than any other citizen for the purposes of a common use.

·   Over the past eight years, at a minimum, the Democratic leadership has also regularly broken that other commandment about bearing false witness against thy neighbor. You rarely if ever hear a Republican leader calling a member of the other party and out and out liar, but you have heard prominent members of the left doing so.  I have always felt that such behavior tells you more on the character of the accuser than of the accused.