Over at DPUD, there's a very interesting thread going on -- it's essentially an argument about Karl Rove and the Delaware Senate race.  To me, the essence of the argument boils down to how we should achieve our goals (end the fiscal insanity and restore the Constitution) going forward.  This is a repost of a comment I left in that thread (edited to remove thread-specific references):

There are three key divisions in planning: Vision, Strategy, and Tactics. Vision is what we would like as an end result. I think most, on both sides of this argument, largely agree on Vision. We want a country that is back in line with the Constitution, on a fiscally sound footing. There are some differences on social policy, but they're small relative to the larger Vision.

Strategy is the big-picture plan to achieve our Vision. This is where we differ. The 'top down' folks think that advancing the GOP is the proper Strategy. This makes Castle an easy call for them, simply because he's the GOP candidate most likely to win. The 'tea party' folks think that advancing conservatism is the proper Strategy. This makes Castle an easy call for us too (just in the other direction), because he's not conservative.

Tactics is the execution of our Strategy. In areas where we differ on Strategy, a discussion on Tactics is meaningless. The O'Donnell vs. Castle argument is a Strategic one, not a Tactical one. The Tactical argument would be how best to get the primary-winning candidate elected. That argument is pointless when we're still arguing over Strategy.

This is why I think it's important to make the distinctions between the various divisions in the 'battle plan' clear, and why calling Rove a strategist is just plain wrong. His Tactics won the GOP some difficult battles and though I don't particularly like the guy, I can certainly recognize that and commend him for it. His Strategy has been an utter fucking disaster. We're currently attempting to undo the damage his Strategies have done to the larger Vision.

This is why we need to move on from this race ... 'chill out' as DPUD says. We have to accept that our differing strategies made this race an impossible situation. What we should be discussing is how to combine our strategies so that we can implement effective tactics in the future. Otherwise, we're just rehashing old arguments and pissing each other off for no good reason.

Posted by: Hermit Dave at 10:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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