Within Range

Richard Fernandez makes the very important point that when the enemy is within range, so are you. 

Obama has a reputation for ruthless destruction of his enemies, often via a sudden unexpected attack.

If you’re not familiar with the story, it’s well worth reading to get a key to the very special Obama ruthlessness. The gist of it is that newcomer Obama, after being tapped by established Chicago African-American politician Alice Palmer to be her successor, mounted legal challenges to the petitions of all his Democratic rivals (including, it turns out, Palmer), knocking them off the primary ballot on technicalities and running unopposed, thereby guaranteeing his own victory before the voting ever began.

Obama won his first race for office not because of his intra-party collegiality, but due to his lack of it. Thus, when he got to the Illinois Senate his reputation preceded him and his potential for power was acknowledged. He seems to have adopted the Machiavellian strategy that it is better to be feared than loved.

He knocked another competitor out of the race by somehow getting a messy sealed divorce record unsealed.

Most establishment Republicans have viewed Obama as just another Democrat, the kind of guy that plays within the boundaries. He's not, he's a revolutionary. Perhaps some are beginning to recognize the truth. The IRS scandal and the Benghazi scandal, to say nothing of the IRS seizing 60 million health care records have made them realize that if not stopped now, the "checks and balances" that have preserved the country are about to be destroyed.

In a little noticed set of articles both Bobby Jindal and John Boehner now say that ‘firings are not enough’. ”You cannot take the freedom of law-abiding Americans, whether you disagree with them or not, and keep your own freedom. When you do that, you go to jail.” That shifting in talking points is interesting. It suggests a decision has been considered, perhaps only by a faction in the Republican Party, to take the “calculated risk” of closing with the Obama political machine and up the ante.

This creates a dynamic of its own. The way the world works — a fact Nimitz understood — is that any time you get close enough to threaten someone with jail you take a symmetric risk yourself. One of the reasons that political crises spin out of control is that stakes are raised beyond the normal. And all of a sudden the currency stops being access or invitations to cocktail parties. What starts to matter is survival and staying out of jail. You stop talking to friends and nothing is the same.

The Washington Examiner is reporting that the lower level IRS employees in Cincinnati are now leaking in self-defense. “Everything comes from the top.” It does? Well what do you know.

An Obama on the defensive may prove less formidable than the same person on the attack. The biggest liability now facing the Obama team is that maybe they’ve forgotten how to act when the enemy can hit back. Nimitz knew that reality always bites back. But maybe that’s why history will remember Nimitz as Nimitz whereas Obama has already been compared to Nixon and that may be the best he can hope for.

Things are by no means over. In fact the action has scarcely begun. Yet perhaps for the first time it’s a real fight, whose future will be driven by one thing: the degree of acceptance by Obama’s opponents of political risk. As they say, no guts no glory.

I would feel better if the military chiefs made some kind of statement that they will uphold the Constitution.