When a fellow conservative tried to cheer me up this morning by assuring me that the Senate Democrats’ victory on health care was going to be a Pyrrhic one, I realized I didn’t remember much about Pyrrhus.
I went of course to Wikipedia. That fine reference work defines a Pyrrhic victory as “a victory with devastating cost to the victor.” It also provides this quotation from Plutarch’s Life of Pyrrhus, describing the aftermath of the battle of Asculum in 279 BCE:
“The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one more such victory would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found the confederates in Italy backward. On the other hand, as from a fountain continually flowing out of the city, the Roman camp was quickly and plentifully filled up with fresh men, not at all abating in courage for the loss they sustained, but even from their very anger gaining new force and resolution to go on with the war.”
So: Pyrrhus’s victory became Pyrrhic because the victorious party lost many of its supporters–but also because the opposition didn’t abate in courage, was able to gain new recruits, and had the force and resolution to go on.
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I wonder who will take the worst beating as a result of this: Pelosi, Reid or Obama?
The American citizens will be the most badly beaten Mac.
Sad but true.