Newt Gingrich: President Barack Obama is “Legitimately and Authentically a Saul Alinsky Radical”

[rhombus]

Speaking in Iowa last night, Newt Gingrich says the “core argument” conservatives have with President Barack Obama is that he is “legitimately and authentically a Saul Alinsky Radical.” Gingrich said Obama “believes in a world in which the classic America has disappeared. He believes in a world in which the United Nations is more important than the United States Congress. He believes in a world of International Law rather than the United States Constitution.”

Video tip:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dgPQeXCRFo8




This is the leading GOP candidate, the potential leader of the free world...

[Maccagirl]

1. The electorate can stop him easily-it's called not voting for him

but I do not have confidence in the electorate to save ourselves from this creep. I can't even imagine the world's reaction to a Gingrich administration.

[SkyDaddy7]

20. I share your fears!

Newt is the classic Right Wing AUTHORITARIAN Christian who Americans are such suckers for...I fear he could be our next POTUS!

Way too many people here on DU think Newts past will hurt him in the general election when in reality it will not matter at all...Only Democrats' past count!

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. does he remind anyone else here of Porky Pig?

[Hutzpa]

3. Nice try Prebus

but it sure makes me fell over...:rofl:

[ladjf]

4. He just makes this stuff up. nt

[Atman]

5. If I say Newt is "legitimately and authentically a raging fucking asshole" I guess it's true, too.

Oh, wait, my statement IS true, whereas Gingrich was just making shit up. Never mind.

[Monk06]

6. Back in the radical sixties when I were a student the only people who knew who Saul Alinsky was

Were Sociology Students. All of a sudden forty years later
and he's Vladimir Lenin. What a crock of right wing fairytale
mongering. Same with Bill Ayers, famous in the late seventies
for giving the big FU to the FBI and living to tell the tale
as an education reformer. Then poof!! He's Leon Trotski's
love child and the intellectual mentor of the "Muslim, Marxist,
Racist, American hating usurper, err sorry .... President of the
United States."

What a load of fucking bullshit and Gingrich is a loser who went into
politics because he couldn't get tenure at a 'who gives a fuck', minor
college because he was too afraid to try and publish his politically
slanted, poorly researched gibberish. One of my favorites, to paraphrase,
"You can learn all you need to know about American history by watching
John Wayne films." Not John Ford films, which are bad enough but John Wayne
films.

I feel sorry for Americans. I really do. You bear the burden of so much
stupidity by the people that have power over you.

[Martin Eden]

28. Rightwing Fairytale Mongering

I'm pretty sure that was title of what he failed to publish before he quit academia for politics.

[kestrel91316]

7. Who the hell is Saul Alinsky and why does Newtie consider him so awful??

[treestar]

32. Must have been Rush or somebody

Who made Alinsky and Ayers the current synonyms for "Marxists." They try to align Obama with any slight connection he has to anyone they can call a "Marxist." And that makes Obama a Marxist.

They even do it to his mother, who apparently once met with somebody they can label a communist.

[Historic NY]

8. well he reminds me of.....

(Porky Wallace)

[Douglas Carpenter]

9. "Now that we have defeated the counterculture - we must go back to our communities and reestablish

American civilization." - Newt Gingrich/November 1994

"It's time we tell the counterculture. Hey, nice try guys but you lost." -

"Bill and Hillary Clinton are nothing but two counterculture McGovernicks"

All Newt quotes following the 1994 election. He's like a cross between Mao Tse-Tung and Glenn Beck.

[Mz Pip]

10. There he goes again

Newt must be trying to impress his ignorant base by comparing Obama to some Jewish community organizer who died when Obama was 11.

I am soooo not impressed.

[ThoughtCriminal]

13. Looky there! - He's one of them what can read!

“(Gingrich) He's what dumb people think smart people sound like" - Paul Krugman

[alterfurz]

27. "Newt Gingrich is the intellectual of the Republican field...

...in the same way Moe is the intellectual of the Stooges."

[MFrohike]

11. Funny

I only learned who Alinsky was because so many wingnuts kept bitching about him.

I think Newt should be honest and just say the name "Saul Alinsky" sounds Jewish and foreign, thus it's dangeous. I could deal with the fearmongering a lot better if it was at least honest. This codeword bullshit makes Theodore Bilbo almost respectable in his honest hatred. How demented is that?

[riverbendviewgal]

12. Newt Gingrich is Mr Potter in

It's a Wonderful Life, the movie....He looks like Mr. Potter, and is selfish, mean and greedy like Mr. Potter

Just watched the movie tonight and I made the connection. It is a must see movie to see this holiday. The town people remind me of OWS.

[DCKit]

14. That statement is not just over the heads of Newt's target audience...

It's in the stratosphere.

[boxman15]

15. But it sounds smart, even if it makes no sense and has no basis in reality.

That's why Newt scares me. He sounds like an intellectual and a student of history when in reality he's a scumbag like the rest.

[Ikonoklast]

41. But they hear it and think

"Saul Alinsky? Sounds like a Joo, don't it? One of them Commie type Joos, I'd bet!"

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

16. and Newt just agreed to attend Orly Trump's Birther Debate

Get ready for it. This guy will run the ugliest, most sociopathic campaign in American political history.

[burning rain]

17. Damn! Is Gingrich going for the Freeper/Glenn Beck fan vote?

Alinsky and Soros... they're everywhere, man!

[provis99]

18. Saul Alinsky? Who the hell is that?

has Newt been hitting the bong with Alvin Toffler again?

[Enthusiast]

19. "He believes in a world of International Law rather than the United States Constitution.”

He believes nothing of the kind you pompous ass. You fat fuck liar, you hypocrite.

[treestar]

33. Right wingers have so much against the UN and international law

They would rather have war, with the US winning and dominating the planet.

[MadMaddie]

35. Isn't it amusing? The dumb motherfuckers don't even know

the U.S led the effort to create the United Nations.

Newt is a failed professor of history.......and everytime he opens his mouth we see why....

I guarantee when Trump holds his little racist forum....Newt and the rest will go further extreme right....the will continue to attack President Obama for trivial things...they will not talk about any policy they would implement because they don't have anything new....they will go back to the past....

[greiner3]

21. Had to look up SAUL ALINSKY;

For the Wiki article, Saul is listed as: "Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 – June 12, 1972) was a Jewish American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing, and has been compared in Playboy magazine to Thomas Paine as being "one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left."<4> He is often noted for his book Rules for Radicals.

In the course of nearly four decades of political organizing, Alinsky has received much criticism , but has also gained praise from many left wing public figures. His organizing skills were focused on improving the living conditions of poor communities across North America. In the 1950s, he began turning his attention to improving conditions of the African American ghettos, beginning with Chicago's and later traveling to other ghettos in California, Michigan, New York City, and a dozen other "trouble spots".

His ideas were later adapted by some U.S. college students and other young organizers in the late 1960s and formed part of their strategies for organizing on campus and beyond.<5> Time magazine once wrote that "American democracy is being altered by Alinsky's ideas," and conservative author William F. Buckley said he was "very close to being an organizational genius."<4>


In the Arch Conservative rag, Discover the Networks, whose Mission Statement reads "Identifying the political left" has this bio; "Born to Russian-Jewish parents in Chicago in 1909, Saul Alinsky was a Communist/Marxist fellow-traveler who helped establish the tactics of infiltration -- coupled with a measure of confrontation -- that have been central to revolutionary political movements in the United States in recent decades. He never joined the Communist Party but instead, as David Horowitz puts it, became an avatar of the post-modern left."

In the Wiki article the passage, "very close to being an organizational genius," could be taken as either a tie to Obama's work as a good thing or as a 'call to arms' for the Conservative base. However, this is the clincher for the former argument and also a great ironic moment, was penned by William F. Buckley.

[madmom]

22. So after reading this, I have to assk....They think this is an insult?

[joshcryer]

26. Newt likes to think of himself as some sort of scholar. So his "insult" is both a compliment...

...and fear mongering.

[JoePhilly]

23. Newt is running to be Lobbyist-in-Chief

[Mass]

24. I wish Gingrich was right on that one.

Frankly, comparing Obama to Alinksy is a compliment in my book.

For those unfamiliar with Alinsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky

Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 – June 12, 1972) was a Jewish American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing, and has been compared in Playboy magazine to Thomas Paine as being "one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left."<4> He is often noted for his book Rules for Radicals.
In the course of nearly four decades of political organizing, Alinsky has received much criticism , but has also gained praise from many left wing public figures. His organizing skills were focused on improving the living conditions of poor communities across North America. In the 1950s, he began turning his attention to improving conditions of the African American ghettos, beginning with Chicago's and later traveling to other ghettos in California, Michigan, New York City, and a dozen other "trouble spots".
His ideas were later adapted by some U.S. college students and other young organizers in the late 1960s and formed part of their strategies for organizing on campus and beyond.<5> Time magazine once wrote that "American democracy is being altered by Alinsky's ideas," and conservative author William F. Buckley said he was "very close to being an organizational genius."<4>

[Jim Lane]

29. My reaction exactly.

Obama's resume includes some time as a community organizer. He's probably familiar with Alinsky's work. Nevertheless, his actions as President have for the most part been far more defensive of the status quo.

If Alinsky were alive today, I doubt that he'd have a very high opinion of the Obama administration.

But, Newt, if saying crap like this helps you get the nomination, then go for it. Despite my disappointment with Obama, his re-election is the best we can realistically hope for in 2012, and an Obama-Gingrich contest would be a big step in that direction.

[treestar]

31. Name one action as President that is "defensive of the status quo?

And if anything should wake up the left that this is the country they face, this must be it. Too many live in denial-land.

[Jim Lane]

42. Just hitting the highlights.....

Maintaining and even increasing troop strength in Afghanistan. (You could argue technically that he wasn't defending the status quo, of Bush-era troop levels, but that he instead made it worse. I'll charitably take the broader view that he maintained the essence of the status quo while tweaking the details.)

Confronting a health care system with its chief problem being the reliance on private for-profit insurers, and successfully pushing for a bill that entrenches those big corporations by requiring everyone to buy their product.

Continuing the Bush bailout of Wall Street. (This doesn't count as a betrayal of the left, given that he voted for the bill as a Senator and so there was little doubt that he would do this, but it certainly does count as defensive of the status quo.)

On environmental policies, multiple cave-ins to big business, most memorably the expansion of offshore oil drilling not long before one such rig produced the Gulf oil disaster.

There are some borderline or debatable cases ("He continued the Bush tax cuts, even for the very rich." "Well, that's the fault of the Republicans, not Obama; Obama had to do that to get unemployment benefits extended." "No, he didn't, if he had hung tough the Republicans wouldn't have wanted to take the political heat for letting the benefits end.").

As I said, I still expect to vote for him. But he hasn't tried to model his administration on that of Franklin Roosevelt. In my opinion, bold Roosevelt-style action would have been better both as policy and as politics, and if he had pushed hard for it then (a) he would have gotten some of it, despite the Republican obstructionism in 2009-10, and (b) he would have faced less obstructionism in 2011 because the 2010 midterms would have gone much better for the Democrats.

[yardwork]

39. I know. If only.

[yellowcanine]

25. Hey Newt. Thought you said this was an election about "big ideas." How does name calling fit in

with that? Just askin.

[treestar]

30. Does Newtie have any type of back up for any of those

statements? Answer: No.

[GeorgeGist]

34. If only it was true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky

[ThoughtCriminal]

36. Alinsky was a "radical"

When the idea of allowing black people to vote or have decent jobs was considered a radical idea.

[otohara]

37. Pundit Talk - Not Presidential

all these assholes are capable of is name calling.

[thucythucy]

38. So "international law" and

the US Constitution are mutually exclusive? You can't have one and also the other?

I suppose this means Newt is against the Geneva Convention. Considering he also opposes child labor laws, I guess this makes perfect sense.

The GOP--Gone Obviously Psychotic.

[Odin2005]

40. Funny, I only learned about Alinsky because the morons hate him so much.