Political Futures

Columnist Linda Chavez: “In 2008, when Barack Obama was a very junior senator with a thin resume, conservatives were quick to point out that the would-be president was nothing more than a lowly community organizer. What conservatives didn’t understand then is that those organizing skills would turn out to be all he needed – not, of course, to be an effective president for all the people, but enough to get him elected twice and to outmaneuver his opponents at every turn. … The debate is no longer about an unwieldy, intrusive law that will harm far more people than it helps. It’s now about cruel, bullying ideologues who would rather shut down the government than accept the rule of law. The president’s tactics are straight out of his intellectual mentor Saul Alinsky’s rulebook. ‘Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it,’ Alinsky wrote in his ‘Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals.’ Alinsky’s goal was to provide a guide ‘for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be.’”