Posted on 09/01/2012 6:52:16 PM PDT by djone
" I detected a change from past GOP conventions that bears mention. The Republicans seem to at last be reading Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky. The messages and tactics of Alinsky, long the monopoly of the Left, have been discovered by the Right..A couple of examples. ...First, Clint Eastwood’s speech was pure Alinsky.. RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions...The mockery of the empty chair was straight out of Rule 5, and predictably, the Left is seething and irrational over it. But the message of the night was Alinsky’s RULE 4:... “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules."
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Not surprising — Romney’s daddy, whom he lists as his mentor, was a friend of Alinsky and promoted him within the GOP.
Except we call it, KarmAlinsky. “What goes around, comes around.”
Some more of Rule #5
Twitter is (as they say) on fire tonight
http://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%23OverheardAtDNC2012
‘Overheard At DNC 2012’ is great!
George Romney did a lot of things in his life, and Mitt has scrupulously and zealously repeated every one of them many times over. In fact Mitt Romney IS George Romney. Mentor, my foot...that’s a diversion, an illusion presented by Mitt. He is his father’s twin, clone, pick your descriptive word.
That’s how we KNOW that Mitt is a diehard Alinskyite.
And that’s how we know he’s identical to George in every other possible way, too.
You were waaaaaayyyy too easy on the guy.
LOL
Don’t care. Get him in the white house. Get majorities in the house and senate. Change the rules to 51 votes and drag him kicking and screaming back to the right.
And if he doesn’t like it, President Paul Ryan has a nice ring to it.
Exactamundo - the purists would have us wait until our messiah comes around - at which point we will have been in hell for a century.
I’m satisfied with one step at a time - as long as it’s in the right direction.
Romney/Ryan may not be our messiah but they’re one step in the right direction. It will be up to us, the citizens of this country, the bosses, to monitor and make sure our employees (Romney and Ryan and the rest of our representatives) do a good job.
Thank you, somebody on this sight that is realistic
Exactamundo - the purists would have us wait until our messiah comes around - at which point we will have been in hell for a century. I’m satisfied with one step at a time - as long as it’s in the right direction. Romney/Ryan may not be our messiah but they’re one step in the right direction. It will be up to us, the citizens of this country, the bosses, to monitor and make sure our employees (Romney and Ryan and the rest of our representatives) do a good job.
“was a friend of Alinsky and promoted him within the GOP.”
I’d like to learn more about that!
I second and third that. No Reagan at this time so we need to take baby steps. I believe Romneys Ideas are good ones. Energy independance first and foremost. Jobs, jobs, jobs. With Oil coal and other natural resource exploration and utilization the jobs will flow in from the bottom up. The engineers to the janitors at the energy plants. And finally get the damn arabs off our backs. Tell them to start buying from us. We have enough natural resources in our country for years and years to come. Romney may not be perfect but he is what we have and Obama is what we need to say “NO NO we are mad as hell and not going to take it any more”.
I’ve been saying the same things for the last month, and gotten excoriated for it here.
Making them live up to their own rules? Please. Pointing out Obama's broken campaign promises is not what Alinsky taught. A better example would be making them live up to their own impossible standards of political correctness, or accusing them of using racist 'dog whistles,' or pointing out their excessive use of energy despite their claims of how 'green' they are (Eastwood did this to Obama Thursday night).
The left does this to the right when they discover Republicans performing homosexual toe-tapping in men's rooms, or having extramarital affairs, or accuse them of paying for abortions. Broken campaign promises don't have quite the same sting as accusations of hypocrisy committed against one's own declared moral belief system. That's what Alinsky meant by making your opponent live up to his own rules. 'Hoisting by one's own petard,' as it were.
Regarding Rule 11: If you follow Alinksy, you don't attack and then offer the constructive alternative yourself. The Alinskyite tactic is to make the opponent (or 'enemy' if you're Obama) offer the constructive alternative when he attacks you - e.g. "You're right. I don't know how to solve this problem. What is your plan?" You would have to be fairly confident that your opponent doesn't have that plan. One could say that Romney was actually countering the Alinskyite tactic before it was employed.
As for pick the target, polarize, freeze ..., well, Romney is running against Obama and his failed presidency. It doesn't take a radical Alinskyite to identify that particular target. But Alinsky was talking about putting a face to a faceless target on a more local level. If you want to fight City Hall, which is a faceless, inhuman entity, you can't do that as effectively as if you pick a person as a scapegoat and gin up hatred among the masses against him, a la Snowball in Animal Farm, or Emmanuel Goldstein in 1984.
A little ridicule from Clint Eastwood does not an Alinskyite campaign make. I seriously doubt Romney's campaign is going to sink to the level of an Alinsky operation.
I agree with you. It would be very hard to have this ship do a 180 all at once. You will never get that many people to get on board. But incrementally, with a successful righting of the economy and foreign policy, we can start turning her around and influence more people. That’s my hope anyway. Mitt Romney was not my first choice, or my second, but this is the choice we have and I for one am not staying home come election time. As Sarah says, Anyone But Obama.
Alinsky was brilliant and his methods work equally well for our side. For too long “we” have brought a knife to a gun fight. It’s about time!
Finally some voices of sanity around here. Romney is definitely NOT my preferred choice, but that’s not the point anyway. The point is that the Founders designed a divided govt so that no one office or level has all the power. It makes it far, far more difficult for one man or one office to take the whole thing over.
That’s why the Presidential fixation in this country makes me want to puke. Presidents can’t write laws and can even have their veto overruled. This is why supporting races at all levels is crucial. That gives the left more targets to aim for, and diffuses their attack. Now we have learned that even the states are in play with their ability to enact Voter ID and limit public sector union bargaining, which strangles the Democrat union ATM machine.
If we get good conservatives with backbone in Congress, we hold Romney’s feet to the fire. We MUST start thinking multiprong strategy if we want to defeat them. There are so many angles to attack them from if we are just willing to do so.
On Eastwood, what he did wasn’t Alinsky, it was counter-Alinsky. The problem with ridicule tactics is that when you target someone or something, it at the same time reveals what you fear and/or what is your priority. Eastwood is an icon’s icon, up there with John Wayne, Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Hank Williams. It is quite dangerous and dicey to go after someone like that, and the Left doing so only shows how craven, bankrupt, bloodthirsty, and power mad they are.
With that one little ad lib skit he left them bleeding on multiple fronts. Pure genius.
Dunno about anyone else but my game plan is this:
Elect Romney to stop Zero. Elect the most conservative possible Senate and House to stop Romney.
Who’s with me?
There. We are also 2 seats from having the Iowa Senate in addition to the House and Gov. Our Sec. State Matt Schultz is chomping to get voter ID on the books. Squeezing the unions is Gov. Branstad’s priority as well.
That’s where I’m focused, but my district has a super House candidate with John Archer who’s trying to beat aging commie-hippie Dave Loebsack, Nancy P’s personal lapdog. I help out there when I can.
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