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GUEST POST - A history lesson

Guest Post, Brian Boyko — 2014-09-10

Our blog is migrating. This blog post will now live here: http://blog.mayday.us/post/98260006075

As I write this, the Associated Press has just called the NH GOP Senate Primary for Scott Brown, with 24% of precincts reporting and 49% of the vote.

Scott Brown’s campaign (counting direct spending only) outspent both Rubens and Smith combined 116 to 1. He started with 74% name recognition, compared to Rubens’ 20%, mostly because he ran for office in Massachusetts in 2012, and many New Hampshirites are in the same media market. While we spent roughly $1.6 million to independently support Rubens, Republican outside groups, including those funded by Wall Street and the energy industry, spent more than $4.6M. And the entire Washington Republican establishment - Romney, Jeb Bush, Rove, Bass, Sununu, Ayotte - all supported Brown.

Back in July - just two months ago! - Brown polled at 61% compared to Rubens’ 10%. That was a 51-point gap. Right now, with 25% of precincts reporting, Brown has 49% to Rubens 24% in a three-way race. With our independent support, Rubens narrowed the gap from 51 points to 25 points - a result that is nearly unheard of in American politics.

No, our candidate didn’t win. But we did give Scott Brown one hell of a history lesson.

Brown’s nomination should have been a cakewalk - one that would have given him momentum into the November general election. Instead, he will have, at most, half his party behind him when the Democratic opposition is unified behind the incumbent.

That is not the position Brown wanted to be in today.

If Brown can call his win on Tuesday a “victory,” it can only be described as Pyrrhic one. His campaign coffers were drained on a primary fight (that he could have easily avoided by embracing the reforms he once did). His campaign has, with a single cease-and-desist letter, invoked the Streisand Effect to forever link him with his time as a Washington “lobbyist” - or if you want to be pedantic, “unregistered, de facto lobbyist working in Boston, Massachusetts to influence legislators in Washington.”

There’s a battle in American history called “The Battle of Bunker Hill.”

Under the command of William Prescott, 1,200 Colonial troops - relatively inexperienced, less trained, and less well equipped - repulsed two British assaults, before succumbing to the third because they ran out of ammunition. Of a strength of 3,000+ British soldiers, there were 1,054 casualties - killed and wounded - on the British side, including 81 officers. And the Colonials regrouped and retreated with relatively fewer losses - about 450 from 2400+ colonials.

British General Sir Henry Clinton wrote in his diary: “A few more such victories would have shortly put an end to British dominion in America,” a statement that turned out to be prescient.

What the Battle of Bunker Hill proved is that Colonial forces were more than able to hold their own in a pitched battle with regular British forces. It was also the point at which the British started to take the colonials seriously. Soon after hearing about the battle, King George III issued his “proclamation of rebellion” effectively ending any chance of reconciliation between the colonies and the crown.

No matter how well equipped, well experienced, well funded, and well known you think you are, Americans fighting for independence from a corrupt system, either in the 18th century or the 21st, will fight you tooth and nail. You may win some battles. You will not win every battle, and the battles you do win will be far more costly to you than they will be to us.

If every “defeat” we suffer along the way ends up like this one, and there’s no reason to believe they won’t, we will shortly put an end to the dominion of special-interests and crony capitalists over our Congress.

We’re simply on the right side of history, and fighting for an idea whose time has come.

This was a special post from guest author Brian Boyko


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