Someone over at dKos explains very thoroughly what the Democrats need to understand about the longterm plans of Republican extremists. Lots of links, so worth reading the whole thing. A snippet:

Whatever you think, please understand that even destroying the filibuster is a means to an end for them.  Should it happen, Republicans will judge their victory not by the number of judges they will place in courtrooms around the country, but by the fact that they have implemented Phase One of their endgame. And, believe me, the real movers in the Republican Party, the guys Rove sucks up to, definitely see themselves as warming up the endgame. After twenty years of watching our nation slip into selfishness, arrogance, greed and political patronage, you'd think we'd have caught on, too.

Yet we liberals continue to address each new move serially, as if each event somehow occurred in a vacuum. Of course, this is part of their plan. They have demonstrated time and again the ability to conceive of an objective and then to plan backward from that objective four, five, a dozen moves. This is what we're seeing with this apparent assault on the judiciary. They visualized the objective: emasculate the opposition. Then they thought backward several moves and said: "It's gonna be the judge thing. There's all kinds of cases all around the country that'll get the base heated up. We play this right, nurture it, keep it greased, keep the heat on, those Democrats'll wish they never used that filibuster." Working one move at a time allows them to watch and laugh as we fixate on one move, exhausting ourselves in the process, oblivious to the overall push. They know, in the end, where they want to be, and we're not around when they get there.

We voice our outrage publicly on websites. They make quiet phone calls. We meticulously source our arguments with links to established news outlets. They make news. There is a world of difference between our two sides and, for quite some time, their side has been kicking our asses.

We really need to start seeing the big picture. We need to plan several moves backward from our objectives, giving Rethugs a series of issues on which to exhaust themselves, while we quietly implement the next phase of the plan. Knowing what our objectives are wouldn't hurt, either. But the main thing is to understand whom we're dealing with, and not to descend into singing "Ding-dong, the Wicked Witch is dead" every time Tom DeLay fucks up. These people are patient. They've gotten to where they are over two and a half decades. They have more money than God. And they'd rather destroy the Democrats than Al Qaeda.