Newt went there, charging that President Obama’s past as a community organizer ties him to Saul Alinsky and to a “radical” political philosophy.
On the campaign trail, Newt Gingrich is trying to make some new inroads on President Obama by reviving an old charge, suggesting that the president’s past as a community organizer ties him to a “radical” tradition.
“Obama believes in a Saul Alinsky radicalism which the press corps was never willing to look at,” Gingrich told a standing room-only crowd at Tommy’s Country Ham House here. “When he said he was a community organizer, it wasn’t Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. It was radicalism taught on the south side of Chicago by Saul Alinsky.”
It may be an “old charge,” but it’s one that the press didn’t and still hasn’t explored to any meaningful level of detail. Thanks to the media, we know about an irrelevant rock in West Texas and we know that very occasionally Mitt Romney can show that he’s actually a human being. We got hundreds of stories about unnamed women accusing Herman Cain of doing something at some time. But we haven’t had a flood of stories detailing who Saul Alinsky was, what he believed and taught, what the Midwest Academy was or how it related to the president’s past and current politics. The MSM hasn’t explored the connections between what Frances Fox Piven and Bill Ayers believe and what Barack Obama does. Those who only get their information from the MSM still know very little about Obama’s days as a community organizer or even what a community organizer actually is. It’s very possible that in that role, Barack Obama led a break-in at a Chicago bank that looks very much like the tactics of today’s occupy movement. The MSM hasn’t looked into that. We could learn from a vigilant MSM interested in doing its job that in his time as president, Obama continues to support radical elements by funneling taxpayer dollars to their causes. But we don’t, because the MSM is still playing palace guard.
Newt’s rip at Obama’s radical ties is welcome, and doubly effective because he hits the media at the same time that he hits the man the media continues to protect. And as a front-runner, Gingrich may force the media to at least make a token effort to look into Obama’s (and Hillary Clinton’s, and many other Democrats’) Alinksyite past and present.
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