Now that the election season has wound down and activity at Daily Kos has degenerated into food fights about Lieberman and whether or not hiring Clinton "retreads" means change, I've been checking out conservative blogs to see if they're handling their loss any better than we're handling our win.
Well, surprise, surprise, it seems that some on the right actually have learned something from this election cycle.
I'm sure we all remember Sarah Palin's hateful RNC speech where she compared herself to Barack Obama by saying that she "guessed" being a small town mayor was kinda, sorta, yup, yup, you betcha like being a community organizer, except with "actual responsibilities." Oh, how the Republicans laughed at the stupid community organizer who thought his stupid organizing abilites could win him the Presidency. The extremely white GOP got a good laugh at the idea that a black man with experience in motivating and organizing urban communities to action could translate those skills into success in electoral politics.
Well, they're not laughing anymore. In fact, it looks like at least a few have figured out the joke's on them if tonight's foray to Redstate is any indication. In a discussion about the future of their woeful party, I learned several are reading Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" and hoping to use Obama's playbook to defeat us next time:
I agree with you--and look forward to an engaging discussion on conservative principles and issues.
But I wonder if we need some thoughtful discussion on tactics. I have been reading Alinsky and have come to realize that the current Democrat victories are linked to smart tactics described by Alinsky 37 years ago.
I wouldn't propose that we use the Radical's tactics, but we better learn from them and develop tactics of our own for dealing with our current situation.
I was thinking about reading Alinsky
How pertinent are you finding him? I'm especially thinking about community organizing and whether or not we could put that to use.
Luckily for us, most GOPers are too stupid to recognize a good idea when they hear one, judging by this follow-up comment:
You should read Rules for Radicals as a know your enemy course. You can't use it much to organize the kinds of people Republicans draw from though. It really only works with the young, the poor, the stupid, or, preferably, those who are a combination of those.
Thank God there are so many of us "young, poor and stupid people" around and we can now sit back and laugh at all of the old, rich and oh-so-intelligent citizens who voted for McCain/Palin. It does make me smile, though, that they are eating their anti-community organizer words and I just wanted to share this.
UPDATE: Wow, I just logged on this morning after getting my kid off to school to find this on the Rec List. What a surprise as there were about 10 comments here when I went to bed last night. Thanks so much.
I do suspect, however, that I'm benefitting from a slow news period as much as the hilarity of a bunch of dittoheads desperately thumbing through Alinsky for political pointers.
Several of you below have asked for the link to this discussion and I apologize for not providing it earlier. It is here in a "Fredhead" thread (guess they're getting the gang back together). You'll find the community organizer/Alinsky discussion about three-quarters of the way down the thread.
UPDATE 2: I did a bit more research and discovered that Redstate conservatives are not alone in their newfound respect for Alinsky and community organizers. According to Amazon stats, "Rules for Radicals" is becoming quite the popular read amongst our conservative brethern.
From techPresident:
The biggest news, in my personal opinion, is his discovery that buyers of popular conservative titles--books like Obama Nation and Liberal Fascism--are also buying Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky's seminal work on community organizing! (Technically, Krebs data shows that buyers of Alinsky's work are also highly likely to buy the other two titles, but the association is meaningful either way.)
<snip>
Does this make readers of Jonah Goldberg and Jerome Corsi into terrorists? I hope not. Actually, it's pretty interesting to discover that the Right's fascination with Barack Obama's roots as a community organizer has got at least some conservatives reading Alinsky. Krebs comments, "Is the right trying to figure out why Obama's campaign, based on community organizing principals, is so successful?"
Here is a link to researcher Valdis Krebs' original study.
Interesting.