Is the left engaging in salami tactics? And what should we do about it?

[Swazi Spring]

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh this morning and he brought up a rather interesting conversation. Rush mentioned that after the liberals and RINOs (Republican In Name Only) have finished attacking pro-lifers, they will focus their attention on gun owners. He claimed that the leftist RINOs will give up on defending gun rights and the Constitution, in favor of left-wing gun control. We've already seen some far-left RINOs do this, such as Mitt Romney and Chris Christie.

This brings up another question, however, a question of whether or not this is a left-wing strategy to divide-and-conquer the Republican Party. I'm sure you've all heard the expression that "first they came for X, and I didn't do anything because I'm not X, then they came for me, and nobody was left to stand up for me," well it's the same sort of thing. The liberals and RINOs are systematically attacking various factions of the Republican Party, first they attacked the libertarians when they ousted the Barry Goldwater group, then they attacked the Tea Party group and now they're attacking the pro-lifers. Will they attack gun owners and gun rights supporters next?

Why would are these RINOs doing this, you ask? The answer is simple, the liberal media has been constantly been accusing conservatives and libertarians of "waging a war on women," so the Republican establishment thinks the only way to "appeal to left-wing voters" is to become pro-choice. Now I don't care about the issue of abortion one way or another and I never have, however it's important to recognize what's going on around us. However, I believe that even if every single Republican suddenly became pro-choice, that the liberal media would continue their propaganda campaign to paint anyone who is even remotely right-wing as "waging a war on women," simply because it helps promote the Democratic Party and liberal agenda.

The liberal media also hates gun owners and guns in general. Under the guise of "appealing to left-wing voters" the Republican establishment will no doubt start attacking gun owners and gun rights. We've already seen the Republican establishment push anti-gun candidates on us, such as Mitt Romney, so you can definitely see them moving towards this even more in the future.

I used to be a lot more open to the idea that if we eliminated the social conservative wing of the party, it would help us better appeal to centre-left and undecided voters. However it is possible that this is exactly what the left wants us to do. This is known as "salami tactics" and it is a tactic the left has done before, namely in Europe. As I'm sure you are aware, in the wake of World War II, Europe was divided between the Eastern Bloc (allied with the Soviet Union) and Western Europe (allied with the United States). Many of the Eastern European countries had previously been democratic, so in order to maintain popular support, the communists kept the facade of democracy up. They did this by allowing minor political parties to exist and contest elections, however in reality, these parties were nothing more than puppets to the communists.

Early on the communists experienced problems with this, however, as the puppet parties had considerable public support. In fact, some of these puppet parties were so popular that even with massive electoral fraud, they still managed to form a government, notably in Hungary. The communists realized that they had to stop this from ever happening again, but they also realized that deposing the elected puppet parties would be massively unpopular with the population. So the liberals decided to run massive media attack campaigns (much like the liberal media does today against the Republicans), claiming that members of the Independent Smallholders, Agrarian Workers and Civic Party (the party in power in Hungary) were fascists, racist, sexist and homophobic bigots. This caused the public to view the ISAWCP in a negative light and for the ISAWCP to undergo a process of eliminating various internal factions of their party in order to "look better." Despite their efforts to "look better," the ISAWCP lost the next election and every election to come. The liberals then used the opportunity to ensure that all of the puppet parties would forever be subordinate to the Hungarian Communist Party.

Is this what is happening in America? If we allow the Republican establishment to continue to attack libertarians, the Tea Party and pro-lifers, will we only be hurting ourselves? Will this set the stage for the RINOs to attack other internal factions within the Republican Party? Even if the Republican Party adopted all of the same positions as the Democrats and European socialists, the liberal media would still attack us at every turn.

We have a few different options, do you continue with the establishment's plan to sacrifice our principles and our freedom in the hope that it will help us appeal to centre-left and low-information voters? Do we double down and fix the growing divide within the Republican Party? Or perhaps we come out of left-field with completely different plan entirely? What do you believe we should do in this dire situation?

 

[Zakamutt]

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I am not a USian. I can't really vote either way, so this opinion might well be meh. I'd like to add that I'm not a liberal either, and your liberals aren't really liberals (similar things can be said of the Swedish liberal parties, though they lean more to the left instead). I'm more or less a social democrat these days, in favor of a reasonable socialism that focuses on effective welfare. I'm somewhat of a libertarian, except for taxes, which I do not consider an issue, though. That angle puts me at odds with all parties but libertarian party (weirdos usually) and the Pirate Party (voted for it last election, too bad I was only one of like 10000).

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While abortion and gun laws are definitely somewhat core questions for the Republicans, I feel like they should not be the core appeal of the party: isn't it more about taxes and trickle-down economics? You could probably remove both guns (well, that's for the gun thread) and allow abortions (well, don't most states do this anyway?) without significantly changing the US' society. Welfare, and efforts to breach the gap between the rich and the poor / or the lack of such, seem to me to be significantly more important than a few fairly silly issues such as abortion, gay marriage, gun laws etc.

Alright, ideological side over, time to speak more practically. First of all, Rush Limbaugh is probably quite a sensationalist (as all well-known political commentators in the US seem to be), so I would take his words with a grain of salt. Second, I wonder if a Republican voter would really switch to the Democratic party (ugh, two-party state, oh well) if the GOP (that's an abbreviation of "The Good Old Party", meaning the Republican party. Very handy when you want to use as few letters as possible, used a lot in USian media) changed only some of its policies. I mean, to the average Republican, wouldn't the GOP still be a better choice? I suppose they might just get apathetic and not vote at all...

My vote in the poll is "kick out pro-lifers, do nothing else". I'm not sure if it would help you very much, but I'm not sure how it would harm you either, and well I am pro-choice so I'd find that good anyway.

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[The Comunist Party]

I am of the opinion that all media to day is made of demagogues (they say what their audience wants to here, and slowly introduce their opinions so that their audience thinks that those opinions are actually theirs)

They call themselves Pro-choice, I ask you, Are we humans or apes? If we are human then we have a choice to either abstain, or deal with the consequences. In which case they are not Pro-choice, but people evading the consequences of their actions.
On the other hand if we are ape then why are we discussing this issue?
Consider this:
If animals have rights, why don't humans have rights. I know what the excuse is they are not human because they are only a group of cells, but if you were to wait just six months those cells are more then halfway done creating a human, think on this blacks weren't humans 100 years ago, women were humans with limited rights, and 2000 years before that if you were under 6 months old your father could kill you if he thought you weren't worthy to hold his name (greece). When we say, "you are not a human because of..." we give a valid excuse for the atrocities committed by the KKK and the NAZI's in the name of humans.

 

[Nuclear]

European/Liberal

I found this funny.

Edit: I was exaggerating, I meant mildly amusing.

 

[Levdragon]

Okay first I have a few issues with the way it is presented. I will go over them now.

1. I am not American but I follow world news and especially history very closely. So, NO, NO NO NO NO NO. Democrats are NOT communists. Being a Liberal simply means you want to change the current climate. A conservative is one who wants to keep things the way they are and not change a thing. So please, when one says Liberal don't get out your McArthur guide to Reds and start dissing them. Did you know the Republican party abolished slavery in the 1800's? Yeah that's right, the conservative party you have now once stood for liberalism. And the democrats were the conservatives.

2. You said "Many countries in Eastern Europe under the Iron Curtain had democratic governments therefore the Soviets made them have a false democracy." No, Eastern Europe was ruled by mostly Dictators. The biggest, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania and Poland all had very non-democratic nations. I'm certain that Greece and Bulgaria might of as well but I cannot say for a fact. In fact during this climate democracy was put aside in order to win wars (which is what always happens) so everybody was used to it.

3. Your same argument can be used by far-left wing people which will say Right-Wing media are trying to make USA into a fascist state, so we end up going in circles with this argument.

4. As for the question of what you should do about it, well that is quite simple. You should ask your politicians to educate your people better so they stop thinking up of ridiculous theories of communist parties trying to usurp the USA.