Barack Obama was weened on Alinsky-style politics while in Chicago.
Barack Obama was hired by an Alinsky protege back when he worked as a community organizer. He’s already been accused of utilizing Alinsky’s Marxist tactics.
Karl Rove went there. He pointed out Obama’s training in Alinsky-style politics today.
Saul Alinsky, a favorite on the Left, was a Marxist Chicagoland community organizer.
The Wall Street Journal reported:
“Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother.” That’s what President Barack Obama said to Rep. Peter DeFazio in a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic Caucus last week, according to the Associated Press.
A few weeks ago, Mr. DeFazio voted against the administration’s stimulus bill.
…Members of Congress should also worry about how Mr. Obama is “keeping score.” He is steeped in the ways of Chicago politics and has not forgotten his training in the methods once used by Saul Alinsky, the radical Chicago community organizer.
Alinsky’s 1971 book, “Rules for Radicals,” is a favorite of the Obamas. Michele Obama quoted it at the Democratic Convention. One Alinsky tactic is to “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” That’s what the White House did in targeting Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer. (The president’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, went so far as to lash all three from the White House press podium.) It may also explain Mr. Obama’s comments to Mr. DeFazio.
After all, Alinsky’s first rule of “power tactics” is “power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” Team Obama wants to remind its adversaries it has plenty of power, and it does. The question is whether the White House will wield it responsibly.
Melanie Phillips wrote more on Obama’s Alinsky tactics at The Spectator last month:
But as I pointed out here, such use of community organisation also follows to the letter the template for social revolution laid down by Saul Alinsky, the Marxist ideologue and activist who set out in his book Rules for Radicals how capitalism would be overthrown by the mobilisation of the masses and the whipping up of their discontent. The strategy revolved around creating apparently moderate local organisations that would be manipulated by community organisers — effectively deniable political agitators — to foment grievance and dissent. Alinsky’s thinking permeates ACORN and other community groups that in the past were associated with or funded by Obama, and which push an agenda that is as coercive and corrupt as it is seditious. America’s First Community Organiser promised ACORN during his campaign that within his first 100 days in office he would invite them in to discuss how they could help him change America.
It has started already.
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