The Cloud in the Silver Lining

I had a long talk with an old friend today... one of the most gifted engineers that I have had the pleasure of working with. Politics was one of our most common topics of conversation, and I used to go to Jim for a unique perspective on current events.

So naturally, today's conversation was no different. His take on the Brown victory was that it will be a negative for conservatives. The reason is interesting: Jim's opinion is that healthcare reform was already dead, and the progressives just didn't know it yet. So, the backroom dealing, the arm-twisting, the brazen bribes, would have continued for several more months, before the bill finally just collapsed under its own weight. Meanwhile, conservatives and independents would have become increasingly outraged by the whole spectacle. By ending the discussion now, the outrage will die down by November, never having reached the pitch that it might have, had the debate dragged on into Spring and Summer. The upshot: Republicans won't gain as many seats as they would have otherwise.

Secondly, a whole bunch of power evaporated from Washington D.C. overnight. The Obama-Pelosi-Reid "leadership" is now largely discredited in their own party. Many Democrats were already jumping ship, but now they won't be able to get anywhere near the votes needed to accomplish anything significant. Not that we want the progressive agenda to pass, but now America's weakness is obvious to the rest of the world. We are much more at risk than before, because our enemies and opportunists can take advantage of our weakness, militarily and financially.

Finally, progressives are comprised of two groups: The ones who advocate a soft take-over, through subversion and overload (e.g., Cloward and Piven, by overwhelming the system with welfare cases and illegal immigration, etc.), and the ones who advocate violent take-over (Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, and most of the cabinet and czars). The peaceful progressives just lost. That leaves the militant ones. We could be in for a bumpy ride.

If Scott Brown had lost the election, the progressives might have triggered a full-blown conservative backlash, sufficient to safely de-fang them. As it is, our world just got a lot more dangerous. According to Jim.