The GOP Goes Alinsky on Obama

I’ll leave it to the crack reporting of others at PJ Media on the ground in Tampa to give you the full story of the Republican National Convention.  But 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.

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.

This has become the centerpiece of the Romney campaign — forcing Obama to live up to his own standards, his own book of broken promises from 2008. The keystone of Romney’s speech was that he won’t lower the oceans or heal the Earth, but instead will help hurting American families.

RULE 11: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”

Romney presented the constructive alternative. After Eastwood obliterated Obama and reminded everyone of the lost hope of 2008, Romney’s positive vision gave Americans something that has been lacking for three years — a constructive, positive alternative vision for America. The vision reminds people of an age before Obama, when the entire nation watched Neil Armstrong step foot on the moon. Pride and confidence are the alternative to diminishment and fear.

And if there was any doubt, this campaign will be about the failures of President Obama, failures of the man to fulfill the requirements of the office.

RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

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