Editor's Note: Did you know, on Wednesday mornings, there's a BONUS KURT column that he writes just for VIP members?
I had pretty much written off Martha McSally as a loser, a sure loss of the crucial Arizona Senate seat she got handed after flubbing a campaign to win the state’s other one, but it looks like I was wonderfully wrong. Somewhere along the line, McSally got woke, calling a liberal hack from CNN a “liberal hack” and inspiring a million Dem-loving media tears. It was glorious, and overdue. McSally laid out that simpering microphone jockey and showed that maybe she can take the fight to her gun-stealing, socialist-tolerating astronaut opponent and keep our seat.
Fredocon cruise director Bill “Ahoy” Kristol and the usual suspects wet themselves over her show of awesomeness – as a conservative, that’s a mighty credibility boost right there. By the way she owned her play and milked it for earned media afterwards, it looks like she figured out that she’s got zero chance if she’s just another GOP weenie too frightened by the over-paid, under-successful consultant class suits surrounding her to toss a haymaker at some punk reporter. It’s about time.
She used to be an Air Force A-10 pilot, riding a 30mm cannon into battle. I know from a pal who was an underclassman that she was a beast to her charges at the Academy (he says she’s top notch, but he’s also Air Force so you gotta factor that in).
Yet, like most career military going into politics, she was pretty useless for a long time, just sort of stumbling through, losing a key election and generally being nice and polite and open-minded and across-the-aisle reaching.
Ugh. Never go full Romney.
McSally is a literal hero, in military terms – an example to be emulated. But as a Republican senator, she just wasn’t getting it done. And she needed to hear that. She needed to unleash the Thunderbolt II pilot that was in there somewhere, buried under layers of consultant goo, just waiting for a chance to send a volley of figurative depleted uranium rounds at some Democrat lackey with a mic and a ‘tude.
Target acquired; target destroyed.
She needed to show us that she was willing to win.
Looks like she did, right Manu?
A lot of people are puzzled about why military vets so often disappoint us hardcore cons. Here’s the thing – most senior military people are not hardcore conservatives. They are mostly moderate squishes, and a disturbing number actively cavort with the libs. McSally’s Democrat opponent is one – he wants to take your guns and money and make sure the Supreme Court is full of judges who support abortion on a whim. And he must be stopped.
Remember that a lot of Republican vets who were fearless on the battlefield turn to gelatin in the political arena. They don’t bring that killer instinct to the fight in DC, and that’s no surprise. At the War Colleges (she went to the Air Force one, I went to the Army one) they teach you less about war than about how to behave so you don’t scare the civilians you have to work with at that level. Treating the members of the mainstream media like exactly what they are, with all the contempt they have earned – especially CNN – is not on the syllabus.
“But gee Kurt, you were a colonel too. Why are you so…uninhibited, while so many other retired officers seem reticent and unwilling to brawl?”
Well, I’m a civilian litigator, and I was a reservist at the end (it’s a very different vibe than active duty, and I’ve done both), and I’m just a contrary SOB. Plus, I hung out with Andrew Breitbart.
McSally was on her way to losing again, but she has now demonstrated the requisite wokeness to take the attack to the enemy. She saw she drew blood and moved in for the kill, grabbing up the domain name liberalhack.com and using it to sell t-shirts. She’s fundraising off the viral vid and the media meltdown that followed. Arizona Republicans are thinking, “Maybe she’s not a loser after all.”
That’s crucial. McSally knows how essential morale is. If you are a commander and you are tepid, soft, and indecisive, your troops are going to resign themselves to defeat. But if you draw your saber, leap to the front, and shout “Follow me!”, they will – right through the gates of Hell.
This was a key moment for McSally. She was behind (but usually within the margin) and losing. Now, her voters are energized. She’s changed the paradigm and got inside the enemy’s OODA Loop. She needs to take it in for the win.
What she can’t do is doubt herself. What she can’t do is listen to the whiny sissies of the media sobbing uncontrollably because the mean senator said a mean thing to one of the media mean girls.
There’s a new Senator McSally in town, and we cons like her. What she did to Durwood R. Murrow was perfect. The only thing way she could have made it better is by preceding “liberal hack” with an obscene adjective.
The kind of nightmare world McSally’s gun-hating nanny lib opponent wants to create is chronicled in my newest novel Collapse. Check it out along with the other entries in the series, People's Republic, Indian Country and Wildfire. America has split into red and blue, and both action and liberal-slamming hilarity ensue! The Never Trump losers call my books “appalling,” which is all you need to know.