Home / General / Alinsky! Alinsky! Alinsky!

Alinsky! Alinsky! Alinsky!

/
/
/
1195 Views

[Relevant background.]

Stanley Kurtz is excited about the Hillary Clinton/SAUL ALINSKY connection, and did I mention that it involved Saul Alinsky?

Alinsky’s original quarrel with the young radicals of the 1960s, which Hillary alludes to in her letter, was over the New Left’s tendency to make noise rather than get things done. Working effectively, Alinsky believed, requires ideological stealth, gradualism, and pragmatic cover. In his day, Alinsky took hits from more openly leftist ideologues for his incrementalist caution, as Obama and Hillary do now. Yet he was no more a centrist than his two most famous acolytes are today.

[…]

During her time in Arkansas, Hillary may seem to have moved to the center. The Rose law firm, after all, was nothing like Treuhaft, Walker, and Burnstein. It was an establishment law firm representing the most powerful economic interests in the state. With the help of Dick Morris, moreover, Hillary took on the Arkansas teachers’ unions from the right as she led Bill’s education initiative during his final governorship. In retrospect, all of this was largely pragmatic positioning. When Hillary finally got to the White House and assumed the co-presidency, she veered sharply back to the left on a whole range of issues, especially Hillarycare.

The same pattern will repeat itself should Hillary be elected president. Hillary has never abandoned her early leftist inclinations. She has merely done her best to suppress the evidence of her political past, from barring public access to her thesis on Alinsky during her time in the White House, to papering over the significance of her internship at Treuhaft, Walker, and Burnstein, to pretending that she turned away from Alinsky after her undergraduate years, when in fact she brought his methods and outlook into the heart of her political work. Her strategic preference for polarization and targeting enemies is well documented from her time in the White House, even, or especially, by sympathetic writers such as Bernstein.

Let’s leave aside the ridiculous idea that Hillary Clinton has some kind of revolutionary goals. Even according to Kurtz’s own analysis, it doesn’t matter. If you’re committed to incrementalism and pragmatism, whether you end goal is moderate liberalism or the public ownership of the means of production, you will govern as a moderate liberal and sometimes to the right of that. Like, er, Barack Obama. But, in conclusion, ALINSKY!

Kilgore has more.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
This div height required for enabling the sticky sidebar
Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views :