Ted Cruz Won

It has become clear after the government shutdown that if Obamacare isn’t destroyed now, it will be with us forever. Waiting until after a series of elections to try to kill it is a fool’s errand. There will never be more support for ending Obamacare than there will be in the next few months. Once the dependency class hooks up their Obamacare IV, it’s game over.

Let’s inventory how Texas Senator Ted Cruz won territory in the government shutdown fight.

First, the Left knows victories are won through the fight.  This is the core of the new Alinskyite model of the Left — continuous agitation, continuous fundraising, continuous energy. The fight builds support and support builds the fight.

The Cruz-led fight over the last few weeks has done the same thing for conservatives.  Cruz strengthened the fight against Obamacare because he exposed the insider D.C. establishment in a way nobody else has.  True, polls show that Americans have a lower opinion of the Republican Party after the fight.  But many of those with a lower opinion are regular conservative Americans who saw the establishment members of the GOP turn and bolt in the face of the fight.  Over two million signed a petition supporting Cruz.  That’s a heck of an email list, generated almost overnight.

Deal-making and compromise have pushed the country toward fiscal catastrophe.  Only Cruz and his supporters stood fast, and Americans noticed.

Second, now is the time to wreck Obamacare.  Some in the GOP think they can win a couple of elections over the next few years and unravel the program once the GOP gains the White House.  This ignores the shrinking attention span of the body politic.  It also ignores the fact that many in the GOP are part of the problem. The establishment GOP needs a series of inside straights even to win the seats necessary to implement this plan.  Worse, the Republican Party seems unable to grasp the ground game of the new Left.  The Left changes the narrative in the short term and ends up winning long term.   Compromise is never the game. Battles are won each day, and not deferred.

What evidence does the GOP offer to show they are likely to draw those inside electoral straights necessary to repeal Obamacare after 2016?  What makes anyone think they will win the Senate or White House? It certainly isn’t the performance in 2012 where an unpopular incumbent saddled by economic malaise crushed a Republican known for compromise and civility.

Fighters win these days, and Obama knows how to fight.

What about support to delay Obamacare’s implementation?  That’s a ploy to save Obamacare.

Pay attention who is calling for a delay.  Partisans like Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), John Stewart, Wolf Blitzer and Robert Gibbs know a delay today means preservation tomorrow.  That’s why they support it.   It is the modern Rope-a-Dope. Muhammad Ali famously employed his Rope-a-Dope to delay the fight, wear down, and eventually knock out his spent opponents.  Focusing on Obamacare’s delay, and not its destruction, is an effort to preserve Obamacare.

Rope a Dope.

Some in the GOP were annoyed by Ted Cruz leading the fight to defund Obamacare.  They claimed that if Cruz didn’t muddy up the debate, the failures of Obamacare would have been cleanly on display during the program’s rollout.  Right.

The failures have only gotten worse now that the shutdown is over.

So have at it.  Show us you’re right.

The failures of Obamacare couldn’t be worse.  Obamacare has become a punch line, a joke, a catastrophic catastrophe, squared.  So have at it.  Prove that a shutdown-less environment could lead to killing off the program.  Go win the narrative you said you could win.

But we may learn that the Cruz-led fight focused the nation on the failures of Obamacare in a way that no pundit or consultant can match.  If the Cruz-less narrative fails to win the field and end Obamacare, then Cruz wins yet again.