B. U. G. S.

I spoke of earlier of how the selection of winners is different from the selection of Spokesmen. The Republican Party went without a majority in either House of Congress for a generation. In fact, from 1931 to 1995, they held a House majority for four years.

Yet the same leadership stayed at the top of the Party.

Those who were at the top of the Party all that time obviously did not care about winning. They had jobs based on their filling a place in the system. As soon as they DID win, the Reaganites came pouring in, and a lot of the old leadership lost their jobs.

Rush Limbaugh scared the diddly out of the media at first. The established media, including respectable conservatives, are always afraid of new people and new ideas.

We are not talking about their cause, but of their livelihood. Every successful movement has to deal with those for whom that movement was a comfortable niche.

It is easy to forget that “survival of the fittest” is a misleading term. Some animals do evolve to rule over and eat others. But most animals do not. Most evolve to fit a humble place where they do not compete. They develop camouflage.

So if you understand survival of the fittest to be the survival of some ideal, you are wrong. The same is true of institutions as of animals.

The REPUBLICAN Ohio legislature tried three times to get rid of my Republican boss, John Ashbrook, by changing his district to include Democrats. In his final run before he was murdered, the district that had been changed three times to add more Democrats had about a 65% traditional Democratic vote.

But in the 1980 election, John got 73% of that vote!

Obviously, what John was doing WON. Equally obviously, the Party leaders were desperate to get rid of him.

Nobody was less happy at Obama’s election victory than Jessie Jackson. In South Carolina, an obscure Black man won the Democratic Senate primary and nobody was more infuriated about it than this state’s lone black congressman.

If you devote your life to a cause, this is a very practical reality. I have always shown my approach wins. People saw me prove it in my confrontations. Obviously, winning was not the criterion, the usual meaning of “survival of the fittest” did not apply.

In the real world, every group has its own evolution. I found that I had to deal with those whom their organizations had put at the top of political and media outfits. They evolve, not so their group will win, but to FIT.

John Ashbrook won and won and won. He was not the slightest bit surprised that his Party tried desperately to get rid of a winner.

Groups that have been constantly losing will tend to develop a selection process that favors people who fit in with losers. I don’t know of any examples of a group that has lost for decades becoming a winner without major personnel changes.