Don’t Know Much About Alinsky
By Mitch Berg
Like many conservatives, I watched the video of Obama cuddling up to the usual dog’s breakfast of radicals in college..
…and thought “OK, that’s maddening, but it’s hardly anything to run a campaign on”.
I mean, many of us said, did and wrote things in college and high school we’d not like to have turn up now. I was a liberal, for crying out loud. The platform I wrote for 1980 North Dakota Boys’ State would have made Paul Wellstone look like Ron Paul. I’d rather it nor turn up, if you catch my drift.
But the President’s past isn’t going to defeat him – and only partly because, like Mark Dayton’s mental health and alcoholism, the media will cover it up for all they’re worth. No, it’s just not the kind of thing most Americans outside the conservative wonk class will ever care about.
And as Stanley Kurtz notes, the present is the outrage, and the future should be the real weapon against Obama:
I don’t quite hold with either view. The debate is miscast, both because it treats the past and present as sharply different, and because it assumes we actually know and understand what Obama has been doing these last three-and-a-half years. I disagree. Many aspects of Obama’s present–to say nothing of his plans for the future–are as guarded and mysterious as his radical past. In fact, the poorly-known side of Obama’s world makes the clearest sense only when you combine research into his past and present alike….There are many aspects of Obama’s current policies that the public knows little or nothing about, and seemingly familiar things that are still poorly understood. When you put the total picture together, the links between Obama’s present and past can be drawn much more convincingly than many now imagine.
That’s the slow, steady drip in the background, for those of us who are paying attention; if Obama wins re-election, and has either house of Congress, he’s going to go on a hopey-changey orgy.
March 13th, 2012 at 1:18 pm
“In fact, the poorly-known side of Obama’s world makes the clearest sense only when you combine research into his past and present alike…”
Translated by the Obama PR machine: What he said, he never meant. What he is saying, is relative. What he wants, can only be understood in the context of future events.
It’s a used-car salesman strategy.
And if it breaks down, you’re stuck with it for four years.
March 13th, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Mitch, it’s just more of the “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” (not that the media would ever remind us of that Dem tactic.)
March 13th, 2012 at 2:09 pm
I mean, many of us said, did and wrote things in college and high school we’d not like to have turn up now.
Hey, when I was in college I joined NORML. Later on I hoped that info never got out. More recently, I’m leaning back in the original direction.
March 13th, 2012 at 2:14 pm
The present is indeed the outrage, but there is truth to the adage about repeating history by failure to learn from it.
My feeling is that many Americans who had no idea what they were voting for when they voted for the affirmative-action President would like to know that gas prices are going up as a stated desire of this man. A look at his background would go a long way toward explaining why.
A smart Republican campaign would not only focus on the present, but also on why the present is a deliberate tactic by a man we knew was a Marxist four years ago. We’re big enough to multitask, and if the opponent isn’t Mitt Romney, the message might stick with enough swing voters to make a real difference in November.
Moral of the story: never miss an avenue of approach when you’re playing for keeps.
March 14th, 2012 at 11:20 am
Think about the fact that these numbers are coming out when we are still beating the shit out of each other in a nasty, bloody, dirty, primary. Just think what will happen when Romney (hopefully) finally crosses a threshold that convinces everyone is the nominee and we stop pointing our guns at each other and turn them on Obama (this is a metaphor for any idiot out there, *cough steve timmer, cough*, not to be taken LITERALLY). His numbers will drop faster than Sandra Fluke’s skirt on a Friday night. Wait, did I just say that, oops…
March 14th, 2012 at 4:09 pm
“His numbers will drop faster than Sandra Fluke’s skirt on a Friday night. Wait, did I just say that, oops…”
I think the latest deal on political correctness is that if you call a woman who is a public figure, as defined by the Left, a slut, you are not a misogynist woman hater. Hence it is okay to call Laura Ingraham or Sarah Palin a slut, but not Fluke.
I still can’t figure out the logic on that. It’s like saying that it’s racist to call your neighbor Manuel a spic, but it’s not racist to call, say, TV personality George Lopez a spic.