Those familiar with the Sacred Texts of Western Civilization (the original 69 episodes of Star Trek for those of you from Rio Linda) know about the Kobayashi Maru.  It is a test at Starfleet Academy designed to be unwinnable, as a challenge to officer candidates.  Captain Kirk was famously the only cadet to win it, but he did so only by reprogramming the problem.

Republican attacks on Ted Cruz for standing up to the disaster that Obamacare will be for the country reflect the corner that the Democrats and the MSM have crowded Republicans into.  Not the least of Rush's many blazing insights is that "we cannot expect to be praised by our enemies," meaning the MSM.  But Republicans are trying to achieve exactly that.  If the MSM is against something, then it is wrong.  Cruz is taking the role of Winston Churchill, pointing out the danger to the Republic and by implication denouncing the appeasers, and the Republicans are denouncing him.

Republicans are going to have to follow Captain Kirk's strategy in the Kobayashi Maru test - they are going to have to reprogram the problem.  What does that mean?  They have to reach out to their constituency with arguments based on the first principles.  Consultants tell them not to do this.  They tell candidates the makeup of the population in this county and that town and this state and what to tell them based on focus groups.  Nevah gonna work for Republicans.  If that strategy could ever work, it would be for a dominant party that controls the high ground of the argument and only has to tune the message for each group.

Republicans are not in that position.  That is the victory of the MSM.  It has delegitimized the basic arguments for the country in the public forum.  But, as Rush has observed, 80% of the country, including most liberals, live their lives as conservatives.  Republicans have to believe that there are 51%+ of voters out there that believe in the conservative view of the country, well summarized by the Tea Party as Fiscal Responsibility, Limited Government, Free Markets. 

If there is not a majority out there for that message, then the Republicans are finished anyway.  A few can hang on as vestigials and get the perks and the pension, but that is too cynical a view.  A better view is Edwards Deming's adage that "everybody is already doing their best" (Deming was the quality control guru that put Japanese industry on its feet after World War II and became embraced in the U.S. in the 1980's when he was in his 80's)..

The point is that with everybody doing their best, we are losing.  That means that we are not doing the right things.  For instance, we as Republicans cannot let ourselves be lectured on morality by the party of slavery, segregation, lynching, and the Klan.  

And the welfare plantation.  The liberal project of the last 50 years - putting people on welfare and destroying their families - is a failure.  We have to say so.  Welfare is a war on black men, a real war, as distinct from the phony Republican war on women.  Welfare warehouses people, particularly men, by encouraging them not to participate in the enterprise economy.  The result?  Chicago.  Detroit.

We know why the Democrats warehouse people.  To survive, Democrats need clients.  Their worst nightmare is a country of independent, self-reliant families.  Obamacare is an effort to turn the entire country into clients, whose access to health care is decided by Lois Lerner, who, with her nasty leftism and disdain for conservatism, is going to be the staff of Obamacare. 

Republicans are worried about what "others," meaning the MSM, are going to say.  Republicans cannot win by running between the raindrops of the conventional wisdom, which is Leftism.  They have to reprogram the problem. 

Ted Cruz is showing how to do it.