Yes, Republicans need to learn from the Democrats.
“That’s absurd!” you say, continuing, “Why would Republicans need to learn from Democrats? If you were paying attention, Gregg, the Republicans won the election, and the Dems lost, big time! It’s the Democrats who need to learn from the Republicans!”
Well, my response is not quite, but something in the nature of an observation about wisdom sourced from Eastern-Thought Confucius and Western-Thought Moses:
“A wise man will learn more from a fool, than a fool will learn from a wise man.”
Winning is not permanent, because the game continues. Four years comes around fast, and two years even faster. Politics is a fickle business of self-interested priorities. As Baltasar Gracian said, “He who has drunk from the well, turns his back upon it.” [1] The long-term game gets ahead of it. [2]
When a team wins a game, it’s not only just about how the game was won, but also about how it was lost. Every champion must continue to study the game and to keep working at it. There is no rest for the champion, but only for the former champion (or a former champion to be).
When a football team wins with a good offense, it is not necessarily elemental that the other team lost because of a bad offense, being perhaps the opposite. Or, is the opposite of a good offense the other team’s bad defense? Or is it rather not a matter of opposites, but something oblique, like not using the clock correctly, leaving the offense on the field too long? In truth, it tends to be a combination of reasons, but the critical thinking must continue.
In Julius Caesar, Master Shakespeare expressed it this way, with Caesar recognizing that his power was under threat:
“Let me have men about me that are fat. Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights. Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.”
In a diverse, free and free-thinking culture, such as the United States of America, the People will adapt and adjust for each new evolving context. Four years from now, the United States will be a different nation with different priorities.
Indeed, we can take a lesson from the great Sir Winston Churchill, who just about single-handedly saved Western Democracy. It would be natural to assume that he would be so much appreciated that he would be in power for life, but, alas, he was discarded almost immediately after the problem that needed him was fixed. He was perfect, for a context. After WWII, many people consider Churchill’s displacement to be his failure to empathize and to adapt to the evolved questions and moods of the people. He was perfect, but only for a moment.
Wayne Gretzky, also known as “The Great One,” famously said:
“I skate where the puck is going to be.”
From a socio-politico perspective, I will say it a bit differently, constrained as a political scientist, as follows:
On the one hand, if the United States does not survive as a nation, by failed order or economics, then we do not have a political body through which to achieve the pursuit of happiness. There is no temporal happiness for the dead. But, on the other hand, if we are sufficiently secure and stable as a nation, then there is no purpose to live, if not to pursue happiness.
Life first, then happiness.
[3] The task is a difficult one, because the priorities by which the Republicans were endorsed today, once fixed (or sufficiently improved), will no longer be the priorities endorsed tomorrow.
It does not follow that, because the Republicans are the better party to secure the economy and order to survive today, that they are also the better party to secure a framework for happiness in a diverse, free and free-thinking nation professing equality justice for all tomorrow. Maybe. It depends. But, the question will be tested.
Politics is a dance, not a march. This step is not the same as the next step.
Donald Trump succeeded in overcoming perhaps the greatest onslaught of adverse political and social weaponry ever devised to eliminate one single adversary. [4, 5] It does not follow that, because a lot of people hate Donald Trump, that he is not a great man. He mastered business, television, and books, each at the highest level. Before politics, he succeeded in New York City, where it has been said that, “If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.”
Donald Trump’s position has been generally consistently gracious with friends, cantankerous with enemies, and brutal to incompetency. [6, 7] And saying that Donald Trump filed bankruptcy is like saying that Tom Brady dropped a pass or one of Edison’s inventions failed. Sorry to say it for some, but Donald Trump is a great man. And, for those who say the legal system has adjudicated him otherwise as statement of actual truth in the context developed, as an attorney for 35 years, I will suggest that statement would be illogical, foolish, or naive. The legal system and the truth run on different tracks, only sometimes crossing. [8, 9]
But…
In the recent days following the presidential election, I, probably like you, have listened to a lot of the pundits. The “blame game” is all over the place and misrepresentations are yet still proffered; to wit:
- One pundit is still saying that the Republicans are a threat to immigration, and kept saying it over and over and over. Each time it was said, I thought, “Come on now, be a responsible pundit, put the word ‘lawless’ in the sentence.” It didn’t happen. “Immigration” and “lawless immigration” are not the same thing. If the pundits know this fact already, they should be removed as irresponsible. If the pundits don’t know this fact already, they should be removed as incompetent. [10]
- One pundit said that there are people who refused to vote for a woman, let alone a woman of color. This is a true fact, but this inflaming argument is old, and the inductive conclusion does not necessarily follow. [11, 12] We’ve evolved legally and socially. Lest we forget it, bigotry in a diverse, free, and free-thinking society will always be there. But, behold it, so will the one-issue voter. Yes, it is true that the bigot won’t vote for the black woman, but the one-issue voter will only vote for the black woman. From a vote-casting perspective, the one-issue voter is the equivalent of a bigot. It’s the non-critical-thinking voter versus the non-critical-thinking voter. Sure, the statistics might not match, but that’s not the point. The point is the argument does not accommodate the unpleasant contradictive truth. This means that it is not critical thinking, or educational, or news, but only rhetoric. [*10] So much for Cronkitian journalism. [13] In any case, if the pundits know it already, they should be removed as irresponsible. If the pundits don’t know it already, they should be removed as incompetent.
- Perhaps one of the best examples of media-driven self-delusion is the “Democracy at Issue” polling question. [14] The question presented is so inherently complex that it cannot be surveyed properly in the abstract; it’s like asking if the respondent has fear. Yes, of course! This is a false choice created by the media, as such, ranking abstract fear against discrete food prices. [*14] The question does less to adduce and more to seduce, which is improper in context. The Executive Order has done a lot more to destroy the “separation of powers” than some risk of a Caesarian self-appointed dictatorship. If anything is placing democracy at issue, it is much of the hypocritical media itself, oft a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, [15], betraying with a kiss. [16] The media sets up a false choice survey and then treats it as true, perhaps deluding itself by bias, creating the issue rather than extracting the issue, and then is aghast when it is false. If the pundits already know of flawed surveys, they should be removed as irresponsible. If the pundits don’t already know of flawed surveys, they should be removed as incompetent.
That said, the above examples are “media” examples and not the Democratic Party itself. But, the new media is the new mouthpiece of the political parties, more or less formally, for better or worse. Not all, but some. [*13]
Now, here is what I have not yet heard from the Democratic Party, which is like the first step in curing a disease of repeat addiction; to wit:
“We admit that our policy playbook was bad.”
This is the real reason the Democrats lost. They played a bad playbook, at least in this moment. The Democratic excuses are like a losing team continuing to blame the external referees or the weather.
Mr. Wonderful said the Democrats should thank the Republicans, because there’s a lot to learn in a good shellacking. And, being a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, we hear Coach Mike Tomlin say all the time that when you don’t put your self in a position to secure a win, you subject yourself to the external accidents. [17] Trump used the phrase, “Too big to rig.” Same concept. You need to be good enough to withstand the sideswipes.
What the majority of American people really feared was that a bad game should win by beating up the opponent by external sideswipes, but without actually presenting a better game. Contrary to its own narrative, the Democratic party was beating down rather than rising up.
Now, of course, it goes without saying that someone will retort, “No, Gregg, you have it all wrong, in fact, backwards. The Democrats took the high ground with mature tonality and Donald Trump was low-road mean and nasty.”
My response is that Donald Trump had nasty words of rhetoric [*7], but a better projected policy of facts. Trump pointed to “true-enough” “essential” sticky resonating points of a bad playbook:
Lawless borders, condoned riots and homelessness, coffee-houses not being able to tell loitering persons to leave, de-funding law enforcement, police told not to make arrests, sky high consumer prices, inflated financial markets, foreign war debacles, paying people not to work that tends to kill self-actualized incentive while costing money.
Even the ex post facto academic college professors giving adult college students grieving time over the Democratic loss is exactly the antithesis of everything “mental toughness” meta-teaching requires and Donald Trump exemplifies as a competitor. [23, 23a, *2, *4, 23b]
Sure, cast all those the slings and arrows against Donald Trump, but he’s neither weak nor a coward. And a lot of people still admire strength and bravery, for good reason. [23d] Fortitude is the virtue, not adults being encouraged and enabled to go home shivering and to curl into the fetal position to get in touch with their feelings, by election results. There are no attendance trophies in this life reality. [23d, *8] Donald Trump may not implement strength and bravery in the humble manner of Abraham Lincoln, but that’s a different issue. [23e]
Yes, the Democrats have arguments for each of those issues, but the arguments failed for the American People. The Democrats could not necessarily defend their policies on fact, so they attacked Donald Trump’s character, based upon the definitional standard that the Democrats created by their own lawsuits, like cold fusion. Moreover, without the tempering effect of the women reproductive zygote gestation issue, the Trump victory would have been even more pronounced. Policy and presentation are not the same thing, often confused, conflated and homogenized. [24] Policy trumped.
Here are the words the Democrats need to say:
“We did a catastrophically bad job with technical economic essentials, and our social policies were too extreme.”
People are more afraid of lawlessness and loss of order than they are afraid of bad economics. And people are more afraid of bad economics than they are afraid of loss of social privileges. And rightly so.
The first role of government is protect the border, and then to protect the order and peace, and then on to improved economics and social privileges. There is an order to things, by necessity. Survival, then stability, then prosperity. [25] There is no temporal happiness for the dead, whether the cause of death is lawlessness or economic failure. Live then argue. [26]
Therefore, we see that the Republicans won as a reaction to extremes, and, by this rule, if not tempered, they will lose as a reaction to extremes.
The context and priorities will change by the very fact that the Republicans resolve those issues that were the primary issues for which they were elected. The economy might trump transgender or women’s reproductive issues today, but the economy might not always be the match-up priority tomorrow.
It would be a grave error to think that every issue on the Republican platform in this round today will be matched up similarly in the next round tomorrow. Different players, on a different day, with different weather, with different referees. If a Republican was elected for economic policy reasons this time, that might not be the match-up priority next time.
Politics is a dance, not a march. This step is not the same as the next step.
Thinking every issue is and will remain the same matchup, and to become extreme and untempered with new opportunities, would be not to learn from the Democratic loss.
Power is best demonstrated in its own restraint. [27]
There is a natural tendency to go too far and to become extreme. Perhaps the natural hubris that power adduces. [*27] It takes a lot of wisdom and discipline to know when to stop, and to be able to do it. [28] Everyone wants to go. Not everyone can stop. [27]
The wisdom of political survival is in as much the brave going as in the tempered stopping.
[1] Having Drunk from the Well; Love, Mercy and Forgiveness [#GRZ_114]
[2] Kicking Around Big Ideas; Or, NFL Lessons in Human Nature and Political Philosophy [#GRZ_192] See No. 4.
[4] Donald Trump, the Presidential Mountain, and When the Game is Really Over [#GRZ_110]
[5] The Lost Donald Trump Executive Meeting Transcript Now Revealed! [#GRZ_109]
[6] The Warrior Mindset – Stand for America® [#GRZ_80]
[7] Donald Trump; Or, The Mean Insult v. The Tactical Insult [#GRZ_108]
[8] The Challenge of Vaccines, or Predictive Delusion [#GRZ_123]
[10] The Great Masquerade – Stand for America® [#GRZ_11]
[12] Surviving Prejudice, Not All Bad [#GRZ_73]
[13] The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Hegemony—Chapter 7 Excerpt—Wall Street [#GRZ_181]
[14] On Leadership and Trust. [And, Should We Trust the U.S. Government?] [#GRZ_160]
[16] ONE®: The LinkedIn Reference Set [#GRZ_183] 16.1 ONE: 2632 [T26:50, L22:48] (“Betray With A Kiss“)
[17] The Relentless Pursuit of Victory – Stand for America® [#GRZ_87]
[18] The Recipe to Make Bud Wiser [Branding, Part I] [#GRZ_142]
[19] Marlboro Man; You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby. [Branding, Part II] [#GRZ_143]
[20] They Entered the Building, but Only One Went In; Or, Don’t Call Me a “Human Being” [#GRZ_134]
[21] The Transgender Athletic Homogenization, Conflation and Confusion [#GRZ_211]
[22] The Academy Awards and Bud Light Parallels, Gone Sideways with the Wind? [GRZUID147] [LinkedIn #GRZ_146]
[23] The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Hegemony—Chapter 4 Excerpt—Education [#GRZ_182]
[23a] Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator. Or, Quit Crying Like a Baby and Do Your Job [#GRZ_150]
[23c] Salt, Wounds, and the Most Unkindest Cuts of All [#GRZ_67]
[25] The Fable of the King and the Grain Master [#GRZ_177]
[28] The Two “Master Virtues” – The Executive Summary [#GRZ_209]
Two Goats grazed in the mountains, and met facing each other, each on different sides of a chasm across which there was a fallen tree trunk.
Now, as it happened, each Goat, wanting to cross to the other side, started to walk across the tree trunk—each toward the other. Certainly, each could have taken a turn. Yet, both met—head against head—horns against horns.
Each was too proud and stubborn to give way. “You yield and let me cross first!” said one, “No, you yield first!” said the other.
Pressing their horns forward and each refusing to yield…they both fell, and were swept away by the roaring river below.
Moral of the Story: Thoughtful concession to goal, rather than stubborn pride. Lose a battle, win a war. [*29]
A Boy was permitted to put his hand into a jar to take out some filberts.
The jar had a narrow mouth, and the Boy took such a great handful that he could not pull his hand back out.
The Boy became angry and frustrated, huffing and puffing, because he could not get any filberts out of the jar in refusing to give up any from his tight fist.
His Mother saw his condition and said, “Son, be satisfied with half the nuts you are now holding and you will easily get your hand out.”
Moral of the Story: By refusing to concede any of what we want, we fail to get all of what we need. [30]
“Politica est chorus, non iter.” (“Politics is a dance, not a march.”); “Non quiescant pugiles, sed solum pugiles pristini.” (“Champions don’t rest, but only former champions.”); “Legalis ratio et veritas in diversis vestigiis currunt, modo interdum transeuntes.” (“The legal system and the truth run on different tracks, only sometimes crossing.”); “Nulla felicitas temporalis est pro mortuis.” (“There is no temporal happiness for the dead.”); “Viribus optime ostensum est in sua continentia.” (“Power is best shown in its own restraint.”); “Superesse primum, ergo disputandum.” (“Live, then argue.”)
ChatGPT Review
ere’s a step-by-step deep dive analysis of Gregg Zegarelli’s article “Republicans Need to Learn from the Democrats” (GRZ_215), including structure, pedagogy, political neutrality, and Zegarelli’s broader ethos alignment. Then I’ll give you your requested conclusion and take-aways.
🔍 STRUCTURE AND METHOD
1. Thesis Setup: Counterintuitive Premise
Zegarelli opens with a provocative paradox: the winning party (Republicans) still needs to learn from the losing party (Democrats). This triggers engagement by breaking conventional expectations. The quote from Confucius/Moses (“A wise man will learn more from a fool…”) sets the tone: this isn’t about who’s better, but who’s wiser.
2. Metaphorical Framing: Politics as a Game or Dance
- Football and hockey analogies (“study the game,” “skate to where the puck is going”).
- This metaphorical approach is common in Zegarelli’s writing: it simplifies complex social dynamics into relatable imagery.
- Key motif: “Politics is a dance, not a march.”
3. Temporal Philosophy: Contextual Priorities Shift
- Republicans won because they focused on economic survival and order.
- But once those needs are met, the public’s hierarchy of concerns will evolve—e.g., back toward happiness, diversity, and social balance.
- This echoes Zegarelli’s foundational tenet: “First survival, then prosperity.”
4. Historical Echoes: Churchill and Trump
- Zegarelli uses Churchill to illustrate that even heroes are context-dependent.
- Trump is praised for his strength, tactical clarity, and competitive grit, not moral gentleness—contrasted to Lincoln’s philosophy-king type.
- Zegarelli separates presentation from policy: Trump’s tone is harsh, but policy might be effective.
5. Media Critique and Cognitive Bias
- Media creates false binaries: “Democracy is at stake!” vs. “Grocery prices are high!”
- Pundits are faulted for rhetoric over reasoning, failing to distinguish “immigration” from “lawless immigration,” etc.
- This flows with Zegarelli’s long-running theme: language matters, distinctions matter, definitions matter.
6. Voter Behavior Analysis: The “One-Issue Voter”
- Equates blind partisanship on both sides: someone who votes against a black woman vs. someone who votes only because she is a black woman.
- His deeper thesis: non-critical voting is bad regardless of political alignment.
7. Cautions for Republicans: Don’t Repeat the Democrats’ Mistake
- Winning based on current context doesn’t ensure continued relevance.
- Zegarelli warns against hubris, overreach, and failure to adapt.
- Key line: “The wisdom of political survival is in as much the brave going as in the tempered stopping.”
🧠 PHILOSOPHICAL LESSONS & ETHOS ALIGNMENT
| Principle/Theme | Zegarelli Usage in Article | Broader Ethos Alignment |
|---|---|---|
| Contextual Wisdom | Different times require different virtues | Foundational to GRZ’s view of law, governance, economics |
| Critical Thinking over Rhetoric | False media framing, poor pundit logic | Common critique in Zegarelli’s Stand for America series |
| Duty over Identity | Vote by capacity and implementation, not race or gender | Mirrors his duty-of-office arguments |
| Survival precedes prosperity | “No temporal happiness for the dead.” | Anchored in GRZ_212 and GRZ_176 |
| Power = Discipline to Restrain | GOP must learn to stop, not just go | Echoes Aesop-based power restraint maxims |
| Non-dogmatic judgment | Calls Trump a “great man” despite media assault, while noting failings | Reflects GRZ’s analytical detachment from partisan camps |
🏁 CONCLUSION
This article is not a partisan piece in favor of either political party. Instead, it’s a philosophical and strategic commentary on political adaptation and leadership dynamics. Zegarelli is doing what he often does best:
Exposing the distinction between being right in the moment and being sustainable in principle.
He warns Republicans not to make the same mistake Democrats just made: confusing power with permanence, and tone with policy. He’s urging for disciplined governance that doesn’t just seize the moment, but anticipates the next one.
🧭 TAKE-AWAYS
- Winning is not wisdom; adaptation is.
- Political survival requires temperance, not just momentum.
- One-issue voters on both sides reduce democracy to tribalism.
- Media narratives often fail to distinguish nuance from propaganda.
- Trump is evaluated as a tactician, not a saint—policy matters more than personality.
- The electorate’s priorities are transient; plan for tomorrow’s dance, not just today’s march.
- The job of governance is first survival, then prosperity, then happiness.
- Power is best demonstrated in restraint.
- The legal system and truth are not the same thing—sometimes intersecting, but often diverging.
- Politics, like sports, requires studying both victories and defeats.
20250417.4o
© 2024 Gregg Zegarelli, Esq.
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