The art of jujitsu is to use an opponent's weight and strength to your advantage. I believe this is what the conservatives must do in the coming 2012 presidential election.
President Barack Obama's "weight and strength" is that by next year, he will have a surplus of $1 billion in campaign money and the mainstream media supporting him. He also has ACORN (or whatever it calls itself now) and other community organizers rallying the liberal troops to make sure he gets re-elected. Add to that his slick-willy youth charm and pseudo-charisma, with which he has bamboozled a large part of the American public, which neither follows politics nor understands how he has unraveled the very fabrics of our republic. Tailor that with Obama's unique ability to make one believe he means what he says from a teleprompter and you have a formidable foe.
But as Rickson Gracie — a retired mixed martial artist, an eighth-degree red-and-black belt in Brazilian jujitsu and a member of the renowned martial arts family the Gracies — once said, "if size mattered, the elephant would be the king of the jungle."
How true that is.
But it's also true that the elephant here (Obama), despite the shape of the economy, is leading every Republican presidential candidate by double-digit margins. A brand-new Reuters/Ipsos poll reveals that Obama is even "ahead of his closest Republican rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, by 13 percentage points — 51 percent to 38 percent."
To be effective, conservative organizations, independents, Libertarians, Republicans, tea partyers and other grass-roots groups across our country must make people aware that it is time we unite as one voice and, if you will, one jujitsu force. And that includes the Republican candidates running for president. If they don't, we will proceed through the presidential primaries with politics as usual and get swallowed up in the partisan muck and mire.
As my friend Mike Huckabee stated June 3 during a speech at the Clinton School of Public Service, "it's not going to be an easy path for whoever the Republican (nominee) is. Whoever it is is going to come out of a bloody primary, broke and battered, because I anticipate the Republicans will do what they typically do and they'll have a demolition derby, a circular firing squad, and load up with bullets and start shooting, and then by the time somebody comes out of this thing — in, let's say, April or May — they have very little time to recover. They'll never be able to come up with the amount of cash that the incumbent's going to have, and plus he's an incumbent president, which means the advantages of flying in on Air Force One and being presidential is very different than being the challenger."
If that is the case, Obama will cruise in and be re-elected.
And if a bloody primary and insufficient campaign funds don't dash to the wind the Republican nominee's chances, then third-party candidates (who will be hailed as constitutionalists or having some other unique quality) will split the conservative votes, and we won't stand a chance to prevent the majority from re-electing Obama. Did we learn nothing from the 1992 Ross Perot and 1996 Bob Dole political fiascoes and divides?
With no clear front-runner who has the "weight and strength" of Obama, isn't it relatively easy to see the outcome if we engage now in political business as usual? As Huckabee noted during his speech, only once since 1868 has a party been ousted from the presidency after one term. (Do we really believe 2012 will see the second time, with President Obama vs. one of the present Republican candidates?)
Radical times call for new and radical measures. So let's try this on for size: What if the Republican candidates got together and, all egos aside, decided to unify and create a collective force that could annihilate the Obama machine because they would offer a team (Cabinet) of experts and leaders? They purport to be able to be the leaders of our divided political landscape; let's see whether they have the leadership to rally us together before they are elected. If they were willing to serve in a presidential Cabinet rather than in the supreme position, that sure would show their willingness to serve our country.
Then they would recommend to us (by vote?) who would be best-suited among them to out-debate and defeat Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. And they couldn't vote for themselves. Maybe it would be someone not even among them yet. The others would have significant positions in the Cabinet so as to help lead our country back on the right path. As the acronym TEAM explains, "together everyone achieves more."
I realize the obstacles these candidates face to overcome their egos and unify as "team leaders," but what alternative do we have?
This is the way we can use our conservative jujitsu to overpower our opponents, Obama and Biden, and prevail in our political combat.
To find out more about Chuck Norris and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
