Conservatives itching for an all-or-nothing showdown with Barack
Obama risk playing right into his hands. A crisis is exactly what
he wants. To understand this, it is necessary, once again, to
understand that most of his playbook comes from radical organizer
Saul Alinsky, and that his playbook also assuredly draws on the
work of professors he encountered at Columbia University, Richard
Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.
“The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will
be your major strength,” wrote Alinsky in Rules for Radicals.
“The first step in community organization
is community disorganization. The disruption of the
present organization is the first step….”
Cloward and Piven, meanwhile, called for “a
political crisis… that could lead to legislation for a guaranteed
annual income and thus an end to poverty.” They propose actions
that “would generate severe political strains, and deepen existing
divisions…. [B]y the collapse of current financing arrangements,
powerful forces can be generated for major economic reforms at the
national level.” And: “Advocacy must be supplemented by organized
demonstrations to create a climate of militancy.”
A crisis is Obama’s friend. An angry reaction is his ally.
Disorder is his goal.
His mortal enemy (speaking tactically), on the other hand,
is steady, sober, thoughtful, rational pressure by political
adversaries who are willing to take the time to consolidate gains,
explain themselves, reassure the public that it (the public) has
nothing to fear from them (Obama’s adversaries), and which
constantly calibrates their words and actions to make it evident
that they are keeping the moral high ground. A government shutdown
does not fit this model. Forcing a debt crisis does
not fit this model. Incendiary rhetoric doesn’t fit the
model, nor do all-or-nothing ultimatums.
This is not — repeat, not — to advocate a weak
cautiousness. Boldness in trying times is definitely a strength.
But it should be a well-planned boldness of considered actions —
preferably “gamed out” in advance — rather than a reactive or
(even worse) angry recklessness. Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan, for
instance, is probably the boldest proposal put forth with unified
Republican support in well over a decade. Yet it didn’t come out of
nowhere. It was carefully crafted, carefully rolled out, and sold
by a man of high intelligence whose looks and demeanor are more
that of the reliably do-gooder brother than they are of the ogre
the liberals want to portray. It is exactly the right sort of
gambit.
Tea Partiers may not yet recognize it, but Obama knows he
lost a bit more than he won on the $38 billion deal on the
Continuing Resolution, and he knows he has been outflanked in the
short term at least by Ryan’s plan as well. Obama is rattled. His
own budget speech last week showed it. His tone was hostile,
petulant, incendiary/demagogic and, in a word, unpresidential.
NBC’s Chuck Todd, an astute observer but hardly a raging
conservative,
wrote Tuesday that Obama’s speech seems to have backfired.
(This is in marked contrast to some of Todd’s earlier
impressions of or
interviews with Obama and.) Todd’s political antennas usually
are pretty well attuned. He rightly senses that Obama is off his
game. The reason Obama is off his game is that Republicans did
not force things to a crisis level: Obama knew that if he
turned down Speaker Boehner it would be he, the president, who
looked radical — but he knew that if he went along, he would both
anger his base and cede the rhetorical ground of saying that
“investments” by government should outweigh short-term deficit
concerns. He suffered a similar narrow loss when he was forced by
Mitch McConnell in December to renew the Bush-era tax
cuts.
For a guy who thrives on crises, it must really gall him
that he hasn’t found a way to force a crisis from which he can
benefit, while meanwhile realizing that the tide continues to flow
(albeit slowly) in the direction away from his
government-corporatist/semi-socialist (at least)
proclivities.
Conservatives should keep the pressure on. Conservatives
should use all the weapons in our arsenal. But we should not play
into his hands by firing wildly, or by rushing Pickett-like over
open ground. Perhaps an NFL analogy will help: For the last four
years in the aggregate, the New Orleans Saints have produced more
yards of offense than any other team. But the Saints aren’t known
for being particularly reckless in throwing the long ball; they mix
dink-and-dunk passes with just enough “bombs” to make the “big
play” a real and effective threat. That model should serve
conservatives, too. Keep the pressure on, keep gobbling up ground,
and then look for the right opportunity for the deep strike rather
than forcing a big play that just isn’t available.
Conservatives may worry that there is no time to waste.
They are right that time is somewhat short — but wrong to think
we’ll go belly-up within months or even a year if we don’t achieve
massive savings. There’s still enough “play in the joints” for the
bond markets not to panic, and for the international markets not to
abandon the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, for another two
or three years. The key thing is to avoid the panic. Think back to
the “economic crisis” of 2008. Yes, the underlying fundamentals
were weak. Yet there was no reason for an immediate collapse. A
softer landing could have been engineered, if only Messrs. Bernanke
and Paulson hadn’t started running around yelling that the sky was
falling. When panic ensued — and only when panic ensued — it was
then that the big-government advocates seized their chance. It was
then that they passed TARP, and took over the car companies while
giving major ownership to the unions, and upended the banking
system in favor of Goldman Sachs, and passed $800 billion of
misnamed “stimulus” spending.
Panic and crises play into the hands of the left. Reason
and a firm steadiness of purpose play into the hands of
conservatives. Obama wants to goad us into a huge mistake. We must
not let him do so. The Tea Parties collectively are the best thing
that has happened to American politics in at least 16 years, and
maybe since the ascent of Ronald Reagan to the White House three
full decades ago. But they will remain the best thing only if they
don’t succumb to the downside risks of precipitous action. Let the
unions be the ones who look like thugs: We’ll beat them at the
polls, as conservatives did in 2009, 2010, and in the Wisconsin
judicial race. Let the left, not the right, lose its cool. Let
Obama be the one who loses his equilibrium. In short, learn
Alinsky’s lessons, without adopting his immoral tactics. When an
Alinskyite like Obama can’t goad his opposition into mistakes, when
his simplistic stratagems don’t work, then he has little of
substance or tactics to fall back on.
This government needs major shrinkage. The way to do that
is for conservatives not to throw Hail Mary passes, but instead for
them to move down the field and then win at the polls in 2012 — in
all branches of government. That’s how James Madison and
company designed the system. That is the system’s genius and glory:
It resists radical change in any direction, while usually requiring
several election cycles for full course corrections. Conservatives
should be Madisonians: indefatigable, determined, but flexible
enough to see that long-term goals can be achieved in zig-zag
fashions. Ordered liberty is our watchword. Disorder is Obama’s
preferred solution, one which puts our liberties at risk. We must
not give it to him.
American Spectator senior editor is a senior fellow at the
Center for Individual Freedom.
