Back in 1978, the late Terry Dolan of the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC) declared that "we have won all the debates, now it's time to start winning elections."
With that, NCPAC embarked on its wildly successful effort to target liberal Senators. It doggedly attacked them with the innovation of 3rd party negative TV and radio ads and direct mailings.
As a result, such liberal icons as Senators George McGovern, Birch Bayh, Clifford Case and Frank Church ended up in the electoral ash heap and in 1980, President Ronald Reagan had a workable GOP conservative majority in the US Senate.
At that same time, Republicans in Evanston were in the business of winning elections. They controlled the municipal mayoralty and City Council, the local State legislators and served as home to U.S, Congressman, John Porter, who resided in a stately Evanston manse, just down Sheridan road from the homes of former GOP Congresswoman, Marguirite Stitt Church and former GOP Vice President Charles Dawes.
Today the Evanston Republicans are politically irrelevant to their local electoral landscape.
But they do sponsor debates.
They did that this past Wednesday. In conjunction with the Evanston Public Library, they sponsored a lecture by Chicago Lawyer, Joe Morris, on the topic, "Community Organizing 101: The Life Saul Alinsky."
Morris, a former Asst. Attorney General in the Reagan administration is a frequent guest on his friend, Dr. Milt Rosenberg's WGN radio show, Extension 720. The University of Chicago grad is arguably the most insightful and eloquent conservative speaker in the state of Illinois, if not in the entire Midwest.
His elucidation on fellow Chicagoan, Saul Alinsky's leftist community organizing philosophy was enlightening in several ways.
First, Obama's philosophic godfather was every bit as amoral as other Chicago godfathers who sported names like Al Capone, Frank Nitti and Sam Giancanna.
He dedicated his acclaimed opus, "Rules for Radicals," to none other than Lucifer, who he cites as an example of a genuinely successful prince.
According to Morris, Alinsky's political tactics were straight out of Niccolo Machiavelli -- the Father of amoral power politics.
Alinsky subscribed to the notion that the ends, in a given dispute, justified any means necessary to attain them. Those who expressed moral qualms, Alinsky wrote, didn't love the downtrodden masses enough.
The Hyde Park author of community organizing, admonished radicals to create discord in any community that they set out to organize, to personify the enemy, to infiltrate useful existing organizations and to shame the power structure into proferring financial support.
Morris points out that Alinsky's greatest monetary benefactor in Chicago was none other than the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, which showered money on him for his rabble rousing efforts (and continues to support his creations to this day.)
All interesting stuff, this.
But I kept waiting to hear Morris' recommendations for countering the ongoing tactical efforts of Alinsky's disciples: the Bill Ayers, Bernadette Dohrns, David Axlerods, Bob Creamers, ACORNS etc.
Alas, other than an admonition to avoid Alinsky's Hegelian moral relativism, there were none.
Guess an actual discussion of tangible counter-efforts will have to wait til the next Evanston GOP Christmas Party. That is held at the Evanston Presbyterian Retirement home. It's a convenient locale for the Evanston GOP's mostly septagenarian to octagenarian membership.
Won't win many elections with that demographic.
But it was a swell debate.
It would seem that the best thing to do would be to fight fire with fire. They won't like to have the tables turned on them. One of those, "Dish it out but can't take it" kind of crowds, you know. ;)
ReplyDeleteBut Ness, that assumes that Illinois Conservative would have the wherewithal to do that. Based on past performance, I sometimes wonder if they can punch their way out of a paper bag.
ReplyDeleteI know, P, I know. *sigh* Sometimes I feel like if I handed them a match they wouldn't know what it was.
ReplyDeleteThere are a few other IL Cons blogs I follow, who are genuinely conservative, but most of what I see around are more the RINO types, who don't seem to have a grasp of what conservative really means, and yet they use the label anyway. It breaks my heart.