When Gibson Guitars was raided by Obama’s DOJ last August, it was surreal. After all, the spotlight at that time was on Obama’s DOJ—particularly Attorney General Eric Holder—for the now infamous Operation Fast and Furious. Yet while Holder & Co. sat ensconced comfortably in their DC offices, a message was being sent to others: the Chicago Way is the Obama Way. Scratch that—the Alinsky Way is the Obama Way. In other words, Obama will "pick, personalize, and polarize" anyone and everyone who does not play along with his charade: who does not tip their hat when Obama passes by the way.
If you think I’m wrong, just ask Rush Limbaugh. Only days after taking office, Obama had already “picked” and “personalized” the king of talk radio by telling members of Congress, “You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.” And since that time, Obama or members of Obama’s administration have been part of crowd of voices “polarizing” Limbaugh over stands he’s taken, comments he’s made, and the un-budging conservative line he continues to toe. This is very Alinsky like. But Alinksy not only taught Obama to isolate his enemies in this fashion, but also to call them out in order to learn who’s associated with them.
Although scurrilous in its application, it’s a very smart tactic. When Obama calls Limbaugh out and Mark Levin runs to Limbaugh’s defense, or Walter Williams or Sean Hannity or Thomas Sowell, Obama immediately knows who’s for him and who’s against him: he can mark friend and foe for future endeavors.
We’ve seen this same thing with the way Obama has called out Romney contributors. In the past week, the “Obama campaign named and shamed eight private citizens who had donated to” Romney. And while that move was clearly an attempt to intimidate others who were considering donating to the Romney campaign, it was also an Alinsky move whereby Obama “picked, personalized, and polarized” those eight people and then sat back to see which media figures, politicians, journalists, etc., would step in to defend them.
As Alinsky wrote in Rules for Radicals: “As you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all of the ‘others’ come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target.”
Thereafter, you can know “the face of the enemy” and “the character of [the] opposition.”
This is the Alinsky way, so it's also the Obama way.
Big Government
