For Overall Victory Later, Sacrifice Winning Now

Sometimes the best way to win is to lose. Or, more precisely, a defeat now can lead to victory later. And so it is for conservatives: Tactical sacrifice--a political martyrdom, ceding ground on an issue--can lead to strategic victory.

Consider the wiretap indictment of Linda Tripp. For Vast Right Wing Conspirators, it’s outrageous that the one truth-teller amid all the Lewinsky Liars is the only one facing criminal liability. That’s the bad news now. But there could be good news later. Any Tripp trial will invariably stir up the Monica muck; the prospective New York Senate campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton will surely get splattered. A good lawyer might not be able to save Tripp legally--she admits she taped Lewinsky without the latter’s consent--but with a little luck and a lot of subpoenas, the first lady, who now poses as first victim, could come to look like the First Perp of Filegate, Travelgate and all the other White House horrors that Tripp eyewitnessed.

For another winning-by-losing example, consider the footsie that the Public Broadcasting System has been playing with the Democratic Party over fund-raising lists. Conservatives have always recognized NPR, “Frontline,” etc., as ideological enemies, and now they have proof. Sure, it would be nice to zero them out, but since that never seems possible, right-wingers should be happy enough that the credibility of their government-funded detractors has been undermined. Besides, from a conservative point of view, how bad can it be to have PBS drawing away liberal audiences from liberal networks? Do conservatives really want to see Dan Rather get higher Nielsens?

Now comes a tougher issue: gun control. Conservatives are going to have to recognize that more gun control is inevitable; the only question is whether it comes now, when Republicans control Congress, or in the future, when the voters have replaced GOPers with Democrats. Because Mark Barton was so obviously a psycho ready to kill with any weapon at his disposal, last week’s Atlanta shooting rampage won’t have the same galvanic anti-gun effect as did earlier shootings in which “normal” people became killers. Still, the cumulative effect of all these shootings is to bolster the basic liberal argument: There are too many guns, too easily available.

Today, polls show overwhelming support for such gun control measures beyond mere trigger locks and background checks. And while congressional Republicans have blocked new legislation, every new shooting erodes their position.

But even if opposition to gun control isn’t politically advantageous, could it be argued that it’s constitutionally courageous? After all, isn’t the ultimate goal of gun controllers to prohibit, not just control? To be sure, many gun controllers are gun prohibiters. One prominent group, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, originally called itself the National Coalition to Ban Handguns. Former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic nominee for president, once said, “I do not believe in people owning guns, only police and military. I am going to do everything I can to disarm this state.” Sarah Brady, president of Handgun Control Inc., called for “needs-based licensing of all weapons” in a speech to the Women’s National Democratic Club in 1993.

But in politics, not all slopes are slippery. Sometimes, if you’re on exposed ground, it’s smart to retreat and regroup. It’s a basic point of strategy that if you’re on the defensive, you can’t defend every position against every possible attack; you must concentrate your forces while preparing a counterattack.

Today, the Republicans have seemingly let the National Rifle Assn. speak for them on guns. This is unsustainable. The American people, moderates that they are, don’t want gun radicalism of any kind. That’s bad for the NRA, but it’s ultimately good for the 2nd Amendment, because it means that if gun-controllers become gun-grabbers, they will be defeated, too.

More than 2000 years ago, the Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu praised the general who “retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country.” Such a general, he continued, “is the jewel of the kingdom.” And so it is with causes: The political generals who are wise enough to see the difference between short-term retreat and long-term advance are as precious as diamonds. Unfortunately, they tend to be just as rare.