GUT THEM LIKE A FISH

The day after Vice President Mike Pence cast the deciding vote to confirm the nomination of Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education, Rep. Tom Massie, R-KY, introduced a bill to abolish the Department of Education: HR899 — To terminate the Department of Education.

There shouldn’t be a Department of Education.  But it would be a mistake to try to abolish it right now.

The Second Civil War figures to be chiefly a propaganda war.  The Lying Swine will spin, twist and distort everything we say and do, lie outright when they think they can get away with it.

Roughly two thirds of Americans don’t trust what the “mainstream” media tell them.  But because so few Americans know enough civics, history or economics to spot the BS, the Lying Swine still exert enormous influence.

This Morning Consult poll  (02/8) on his executive orders indicates President Trump’s policies are much more popular than he is.

Americans approve, 55 percent to 38 percent, his EO on a temporary travel ban from 7 predominantly Muslim countries; approve, 55-33, cutting funding for “sanctuary” cities.  Every Trump executive order, and his nomination of Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, is supported by at least a plurality.

Yet in the Morning Consult poll, only 47 percent of respondents approved of President Trump’s performance in office, a decline of 2 percentage points from the week before. Gallup’s tracking poll shows similar results.  Rasmussen’s Daily Trump Approval Index has him at 52% today (02/14), down 1% from last week.

Note, however, that Rasmussen’s latest weekly Right Track-Wrong Track survey issued yesterday (02/13), 45% of Likely U.S. Voters think the country is heading in the right direction, which is higher than at any time during all eight Obama years.  For all of 2016, it was in the mid to upper 20s.

Nonetheless, ever since Trump hit a high of 59% approval on January 26 (see Approval Index link above), the 24/7 media hate on him has been dragging The Donald down.

So, if we try to abolish the Department of Education, the Lying Swine will bray to the moon that we want to abolish public education.  If we try to abolish the EPA, the Lying Swine will howl we want to hurt the environment.

Of course they will.  Here’s the problem: the public relations battle will be driven by their lies rather than by the substance of our arguments.  Tens of millions of ill-educated Americans who rarely dig deeper into the news than the headlines will be concerned.  If we have to explain what we mean, we’ll be on defense, not offense – and we will already have lost.

We must make our policy initiatives as demagogue proof as possible. We shouldn’t try to abolish useless government agencies.  We should gut them like a fish.

The key to winning a propaganda war is the acronym KISS (Keep It Simple and Stupid).

Ordinary people pay little attention to how federal agencies are managed.  If we leave the hollowed out corpse standing, we can divert funding from the most obnoxious programs and rein in the bureaucracy without giving the Lying Swine something easy to demagogue.

We must stick it to the Fascist Left.  But we’re more likely to succeed if we stab them in the shadows, not in broad daylight.  Make the unwillingness of most Americans to delve much below the headlines work for us instead of against us.

The Left has weaponized the federal government.  It would be good to disarm it, but better still to turn the cannons the Left created on the Left.  President Trump has appointed the right guys and gals to do this.

Betsy DeVos can do more harm to teacher unions as Secretary of Education than we could do by abolishing the department.

The presidency is a “bully pulpit,” Teddy Roosevelt said.  That pulpit – and President Trump’s willingness to use it — is our best tool to cut through the fog of BS from the Lying Swine.

Cabinet offices can be bully pulpits too. As Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos can do more to promote school choice than she — or anyone else — could ever do as a private citizen or Member of Congress.

Imagine Secretary DeVos holding town meetings with parents in inner city Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia to listen to their concerns about education, and to talk about school choice. Moonbats doubtless will try to disrupt them, which would draw more attention to what Betsy has to say – and likely would peeve black parents who care about the schooling of their kids.  Finally, we would have meaningful outreach to the black community.

We can beat the Lying Swine, because they’re so predictable, and not all that smart.

To win, we must focus like a laser on a few important issues where a majority of Americans support us, and to practice message discipline.  Before we open our mouths – or tweet something – we should think carefully about how the Lying Swine might distort what we have to say, then phrase our arguments in ways that will make it difficult for them to do so.

We should never respond emotionally to a provocation. We should get even.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration.  Until his retirement last month, he was the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.