Torba’s Takeover Plan Amounts to Electing a Better Pope

Andrew Torba wants to reclaim the American Republic, and I commend him for his desire to make our nation a better place for our posterity. But his call to action reveals an underlying problem. Instead of rejecting the statist system that Americans have embraced, he calls for a political effort to take it over. Torba insists, “We cannot cede the Republican Party to the donor class.” This reveals the mistake we must avoid: pouring energy into taking back a man-made system. This is the functional equivalent of the Reformers spending all their time trying to get their guy elected as the Pope. The only strategic response was to reject the Papacy entirely. Today, we must reject statism entirely.

Torba is right that a sickness lies at the heart of the West. A sickness that is political, economic, and spiritual. He correctly identifies the symptoms: a parasitic Gerontocracy, the suppression of the native-born, economic serfdom, and the prioritization of globalist and foreign interests over the American family. He sees the “ladder pulled up” and the “gate locked from the inside.”

He calls for an immediate, uncompromising seizure of the Republican Party – a takeover of its command-and-control center. His solution is to wrestle the levers of power – law enforcement, the courts, the military, the legislative pen – from the hands of the elite and place them in the hands of true patriots.

But this is where the strategy breaks down. While I can appreciate the rage, the urgency, and the accurate diagnosis, I submit we must reject the prescription. To seize a rotting edifice is not renewal; it is merely taking ownership of the decay. We should not seek to elect better law-givers; we should dismantle the legislative system entirely.

The Deceptive Lure of ‘Flipping the Table‘

Torba lays out a plan for political conquest: “It is about flipping the table over and building a new one from the wreckage…We will primary every entrenched incumbent…We will dominate local precinct committees…We will become the precinct captains, the delegates, the organizers.”

This is not a blueprint for reformation; it is the common political bait offered repeatedly to an angry electorate. Politicians can and will rise up to feed on Torba’s angst, offering themselves as the true American Patriot who will use the legislative branch and the statist system to serve you. Some promises might be kept, most won’t, and we will be further committed to the statist, legislative system after putting in a bunch of effort and participating in the American sacrament of voting.

When Torba suggests voting out the bad guys, he is still operating under the broken premise that the solution is to replace bad statists with new ones who swear allegiance only to the American people. But an oath to the people is no substitute for obedience to God’s Law. If the system remains, the next patriotic cohort will simply use their newly seized legislative power to create the next set of enslaving, man-made laws.

When will we stop taking the bait and reject the system entirely, as the Reformers did with the Papacy?

The True Levers of Power

Torba asserts that “Our focus must be razor-sharp and unemotional: the only institutions that matter in the immediate fight are the main levers of power. Control over law enforcement, the courts, the military, and the legislative pen is what stands between a nation and its oblivion.”

But the true levers of power are the people willing to enforce man-made law. The power of law enforcement, the courts, and the legislative pen is entirely derivative; it is contingent on a compliant populace willing to carry out its unjust mandates. If we strike at that root – if we teach the people to reject and refuse to enforce man-made law against their neighbors – all the “levers of power” lose their grip over the nation. The Reformers did not seize control of the Papacy; they taught the people to reject its laws.

Torba makes a telling assertion: “Our institutions, from the halls of Congress to the boardrooms…are no longer instruments of building and renewal.”

This single phrase reveals a fundamental, tragic faith in the American constitutional system. He implies that the structure was once good – that the legislative machine used to be an instrument of justice – and simply needs the right hands on the controls.

Wrong.

The problem is not that the system “no longer” works; the problem is that it promotes man’s laws as God’s laws, which is idolatry and the error of the Papacy. The legislative branch, by its very design, claims the authority reserved for God alone: the authority to create law. The moment a people believe that the solution to their problems lies in the next set of man-made statutes, they have consecrated the system of human autonomy.

Torba laments that our current cohort of elders have “committed the great abdication.” Yes, the people in power are corrupt, but Torba fails to recognize a deeper, more chilling reality: the legislative system itself attracts the wicked. It is a breeding ground for those who desire to gain power by crafting and enforcing their own edicts. Humble men recoil from this work; the proud are drawn to it. Until the American people reject the system of human law-giving and refuse to enforce man-made legislation against their neighbors, we will get more of the same.

The office of the legislator, designed to create and enforce man-made law, is an ungodly office. The only electoral involvement that could potentially align with a principled rejection of statism is to select men who refuse to enforce or make any man-made laws. Their sole public duty would be to call the people to biblical justice, adjudicating and executing justice based on God’s Law-Word alone.

Torba rightly identifies that the current administration’s “true priority list” is the unparalleled benefits bestowed upon a specific, well-connected foreign interest (Israel). This disastrous policy is not a mere political misstep; it is the inevitable consequence of a system that thrives on man-made law and forced compliance. The entire structure – from backroom deals to the inflationary banking buttressed by laws against a free money supply – traces back to man’s idolatry of making his own rules about society. We cannot fix the fruit (aid to Israel, forced taxation, welfare) without uprooting the tree (the statist system and the man-made legislative power to tax and spend).

I submit that Lancastrian Theonomy – the vision of a people self-governed by the timeless, simple, yet profound justice of God’s Law-Word – is the path forward. The nations are not waiting for a sanctified version of Aristotelian political theory, or a cleaner, more patriotic set of man-made laws. They are waiting for God’s Law (Isaiah 42:4). Our task, therefore, is not a political recovery of a statist system. We must set aside secondary differences and unify not for the sake of electoral coalition, but to establish justice, and only justice (Deut. 16:20). Our battle is against the false religion of statism. We will not win this war by attempting to control the enemy’s camp.

Some will read this and accuse me of advocating inaction, suggesting that we should “sit on our hands” while the nation is destroyed. That is profoundly false. I am not calling for apathy; I am calling for a far more difficult and demanding action than simply casting a vote. The problem that led us here was disobedience to God’s Law – the substitution of man’s laws for God’s statutes. The solution is not more disobedience channeled through a “patriotic” legislative and political effort. Our action must be principled: a radical, localized, and uncompromising submission to Christ’s Law in our homes, churches, and communities. We must do something, but it must be the right thing, in the right way, for the right King. We must exchange the bait of political, statist conquest for the hard, glorious truth of theonomic reformation.