Conservatives learn to fight like liberals

Brendan Miniter wrote in OpinionJournal .... It's hard to know when this began. But on a variety of fronts conservatives are using arguments and tactics heretofore under patent protection by the left, including pushing for activist judges (with four decades of liberal jurisprudence on the books, the left's best hope is judges who respect precedent above all), using federal dollars to build political constituencies, filing lawsuits, launching boycotts, and arguing for free speech and "diversity" in education.

Hoisted With Their Own Petard

The last has drawn a surprising amount of attention lately with a debate over evolution and "intelligent design"--the hypothesis that evolution isn't random but rather the mechanism an intelligent being uses to change the universe. President Bush pushed this debate well into the public spotlight by remarking that intelligent design should be taught in addition to random evolution. Whatever the merits of this debate, it's interesting that the "religious right" is co-opting the arguments of the left. With "diversity" a worthy goal in education, why not present students with "both sides"? That way no one is left out and everyone is included. The question alone has to be infuriating for the left.

ROF, LMAO

.... The National Rifle Association called recently for a boycott of ConocoPhillips Co. over the energy giant's attempts to stop its Oklahoma employees from keeping guns locked in the trunks of their cars while at work. A new state law specifically protects the right to keep and bear arms in a car while at work. Conoco is drawing fire because it is suing to stop that law from going into effect.

a Boycott. Boy oh boy

Meanwhile in Arizona a cattleman turned the tables on an environmental group to win a massive settlement.... The Bush administration is also using the government to beat the left at its own game. Democrats vigorously objected to President Bush's Faith Based Initiative not because they are antireligion per se, but because by opening up federal grants and federal institutions to faith-based groups, the president was putting religious organizations on equal footing with predominantly liberal secular groups that had come to think of federal charitable dollars as exclusively theirs. With federal money, the religious groups would suddenly be competitive.

It is similar to the Left feeling it was fine for tax dollars to support a liberal PBS and NPR, but they had a cow when Republicans said that if they were going to get tax dollars, then needed to be "Fair and Balanced" in their programming

The left fears that government bureaucracies will feel pressure from above by elected Republicans and from below by a growing political constituency that's leaning to the right. That fear is likely to be realized if Republicans ever succeed at creating private accounts for Social Security, Medicare or other large entitlements. The Ownership Society is scary to the left precisely because it is meant to change the face of the culture. Republicans are now starting to realize that like in war, winning often means adopting your opponent's best tactics.