Will Obama Blitzkrieg awaken opposition ?

"Why is Obama pushing Congress to pass a comprehensive, $1.5 TRILLION health care bill [or Stimulus Bill or Energy Bill] so fast that nobody in Congress will have a chance to read it? The answer is obvious. It's called Blitzkrieg." Auburn, California Journal, 7/17/2009

Blitzkrieg means lightning war. It means lighting fast, coordinated attack. Rapid dominance.

Political order in changing societies by Samuel P. Huntington (2006)
Chapter 6: Reform and Political Change
"Strategy and Tactics of Reform: Fabianism, Blitzkrieg, and Violence"

[page 346] [The comprehensive blitzkrieg approach enables the reformer] to make known all his goals at an early time and to press for as many of them as he could in the hope of obtaining as much as possible.

The [incremental Fabian approach] is the foot-in-the-door approach of concealing his aims, separating the reforms from each other, and pushing for only one change at a time. . . .

To achieve his goals, the reformer should separate and isolate one issue from another, but, having done this, he should when the time is ripe, dispose of each issue as rapidly as possible, removing it from the political agenda before his opponents are able to mobilize their forces. The ability to achieve this proper mix of Fabianism and blitzkrieg is a good test of the political skill of the reformer. . . .

[page 347] The essence of reform-mongering in a modernizing country, however, is to structure the situation so as to influence if not to determine the participants in the political arena. The nature of the demands and the nature of the issues formulated by the reformer in large part shape the allies and the opponents who will play roles in the political process. The problem for the reformer is not to overwhelm a single opponent with an exhaustive set of demands, but to minimize his opposition by an apparently very limited set of demands. . . .

[page 352] A Fabian strategy of isolating one set of issues from another thus tends to minimize the opposition which the reformer confronts at any one time. Similar considerations lead the reformer to employ blitzkrieg tactics in handling each individual issue or set of issues. Then the problem is to enact and to implement legislation embodying a specific reform policy.

Celerity [rapidity of motion or action] and surprise--those two ancient principles of war--here become tactical necessities.

The existing amount of power in the political system is normally fairly heavily concentrated in the hands of the reforming leader. His need is to put through his reforms before the opposition can mobilize its supporters, expand the number of participants and the amount of power in the system, and thus block the changes.

"Both experience and reason," [Cardinal] Richelieu observed, "make it evident that

• what is suddenly presented ordinarily astonishes in such a fashion as to deprive one of the means of opposing it,
• while if the execution of a plan is undertaken slowly the gradual revelation of it can create the impression that it is only being projected and will not necessarily be executed."

[Does it now somehow seem that our option on the
2008 presidential ballot was a choice between
blitzkrieg or Fabianism?]

[page 357] In no society do significant social, economic, or political reforms take place without violence or the imminent likelihood of violence. . . The active participants in such violence are usually far removed from the centers of power, but the fact of such violence may be effectively used by reformers to push through measures which might otherwise be impossible. Such violence, indeed, may well be encouraged by leaders who are completely committed to working within the existing system, and who view the violence as a required stimulus for reforms within that system"

[page 363] Historically, it has often been pointed out, great revolutions have followed periods of reform, not periods of stagnation and repression.