Newt Must Channel Saul Alinsky to Win
NEW YORK (
) -- Most Americans, including myself, had never heard the name Saul Alinsky before Newt Gingrich accused President Barack Obama of being a "Saul Alinsky radical." Ironically, if Newt embraces Saul Alinsky's focus on empowering the voters that Mitt admits he does not care about then Newt can still win the Republican Party nomination.
A quick
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search convinced me that I needed to read Saul Alinsky's 1971 book "Rules for Radicals". Skipping past the $8.80 offer from
Amazon.com
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, I borrowed the book from my county library as I had already purchased it with my tax dollars.
Newt Gingrich |
Every budding community organizer, precinct captain, candidate, and campaign manager should read "Rules for Radicals" or lose to the competition that has read it.
Newt can come back to Florida with the most delegates for the Republican nomination by playing to his strengths of being the ideas candidate and adopting the Saul Alinsky personal philosophy. Alinsky wrote about his personal philosophy saying, "optimism brings with it hope, a future with a purpose, and therefore, a will to fight for a better world." Preaching the end of times won't win.
While pundits panned Newt's Florida exit speech for planning to do work on his presidential inauguration day, this fits within the Alinsky philosophy to "visualize a mountain with no top" where the winning peak of electoral victory starts the climb to solve problems. On the other hand, Alinsky wrote about how the effect of Mitt Romney not caring about the poor enough to offer help out of poverty means "they give up the dream of what may lie ahead on the heights of tomorrow for a perpetual nightmare - an endless succession of days fearing the loss of a tenuous security." A platform of weakening the safety net and shifting more of the tax burden from the rich to the poor will not garner votes from the 'Have-Nots'.
All elected officials and candidates ought to follow the Alinsky statement that "ethics is doing what is best for the most." With a contracting middle class that Alinsky calls the "Have-a-Little, Want-Mores" and a large block of the working poor that do vote, Newt expressing his concern for all Americans is a step in the right direction.
Newt can win the Republican nomination by making the Alinsky case that the opposition "is unprincipled and will go whichever way the wind blows, his arrogance is masked by a fake humility, he is dogmatically stubborn, a hypocrite, unscrupulous and unethical, and he will do anything to win." Sound familiar? It is amazing how little politics has changed in the four decades since those words were written.
Key personal traits shared by Newt Gingrich and Saul Alinsky include curiosity, irreverence, and imagination. Alinsky praised the "free, open search for ideas no matter where they may lead." While this article is not an endorsement of any candidate, I do endorse Newt's idea of having a moon colony.
The final reason why Newt should embrace Alinsky is that Alinsky was very understanding toward Newt's cardinal sin. Alinsky wrote, "The marriage record of organizers is with rare exception disastrous. Further, the tensions, the hours, the home situation, and the opportunities, do not argue for fidelity. Also, with rare exception, I have not known really competent organizers who were concerned about celibacy." Organizing is "extreme patriotism."
Pick your candidate, organize to gain power, give no quarter to the opposition, and always vote.
-- Opinion of Kevin Baker in Jupiter, Fla.
Kevin Baker became the senior financial analyst for TheStreet Ratings upon the August 2006 acquisition of Weiss Ratings by TheStreet.com, covering equity and mutual fund ratings. He joined the Weiss Group in 1997 as a banking and brokerage analyst. In 1999, he created the Weiss Group's first ratings to gauge the level of risk in U.S. equities. Baker received a B.S. degree in management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.B.A. with a finance specialization from Nova Southeastern University.
