1) If you’re going to be blamed for something, then you might as well do it.

This one is simple enough. Whenever a right-wing government comes into power and makes the slightest cut in any budget whatsoever, it will be immediately accused of “gutting” public services. This is even true if such a government merely slows the rate of increase in spending and makes no actual cut.

Accusations that you have “slashed” public services are likely to stick for the simple reason that the public is prone to believe such things about you. The same is true for a left-wing government and tax increases. A left-wing government which leaves tax rates unchanged is still going to be accused of “raising” taxes and the public is going to believe those accusations.

Given this, if your opposition is going to be able to damage you by successfully accusing you of something (regardless of whether you actually do it) then you might as well do what you’re about to be accused of in order to reap the political benefits as well as suffer the consequences.

2) There’s no point in being nice to people who aren’t going to vote for you.

Too many governments suffer because they try to please all the people all of the time. Given the polarization of American politics (and politics in general) there’s no reason to ever bother even trying to play nice with your opponents. Regardless of how nice Republicans are to blacks, they’re still going to be tarred as racists and the Democrats are still going to win 90% of the black vote. Therefore, effort expended actually tying to appeal to groups unlikely to support you is wasted.

In fact, given that pretty much every group has another equally large group that hates it, trying to pander to people who aren’t going to vote for you in any case is a vote-losing proposition since it will demoralize your own base.

This should be remembered in the fight over the Federal Marriage Amendment. To date, a disproportionate influence has been exercised in this fight by the Log Cabin Republicans and other gay conservatives (meaning: Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch). The votes we gain by pandering to these people are dwarfed by those that can be gained through demagogic denunciations of them.

3) Word games work.

In the long-term both the abortion and gay “rights” battles are going to be won and lost because of semantics. By seizing upon the term “pro-life” and inveighing against “partial-birth” abortion, anti-abortion forces have seized the verbal high ground. Similarly, the pro-gay forces are going to win their battle, because they’ve managed to cloak their agenda in the rhetoric of civil rights, thereby cloaking opponents in an aura of disreputability.

4) Win battles by shifting the ground on which they are fought.

Most politicians these days are so unprincipled that, as the environment changes, they’ll seamlessly change. A government, therefore, can win every single ideological battle by staking our positions so extreme that the opposition will have little choice but to drastically shift its own positions in order to keep in step.

For example, if you propose a 5% cut in the budget for some item, your opponents will probably (depending on ideological affiliations) either call for a 10% cut or simply holding funding even. If, however, you were to propose a 50% cut then they’d have little choice but to shift to something much closer to what you proposed. Therefore, even if they “win”, you still end up with a 30% cut or something along similar lines.

I heavily advocated this theory after September 11th. Argue for only a limited response, and people will argue for no response at all. Call for a new crusade, and your opponents (or, at least, your more pragmatic opponents) will have to propose something nearly as extreme.

5) Don’t bid when you can be outbid.

Republicans should never fight for social programs because the Democrats are always prepared to offer more. If the GOP were to propose a guaranteed income of $20,000 a year for each American the Democrats would, of course, be prepared to pay $40,000. Therefore, you must find areas where your opponent has a limited (or fixed) area of movement, and push hard in these areas.