Follow Alinsky: Call Obama’s bluff

By Neil W. McCabe

"In his famous primer, “Rules for Radicals,” Saul Alinsky made two points that help illuminate how President Barack Obama has chosen to lead America. The first point is that Alinsky instructed his acolytes to manufacture a crisis—any crisis—and to then use that any crisis to polarize the community for and against the community organizer."

"For the last five years, this has been how Obama has led the nation, crisis-to-crisis, and always leaving the middle ground for compromise like the no man’s land between the trenches.

Syria is the most recent example, but as the White House has matured in power, it has learned to layer crisis atop scandal atop cliff, creating the chaos and tumult that gives the president leverage as the eye of each storm.

The point of Alinsky’s that applies to the Obama White House is to always call the opponent’s bluff. By calling the opponent’s bluff, Alinsky said the opponent is more often than not forced to carry out an emotional threat he is not actually set up to execute or that is practical.

Obama betrayed his Alinsky training in the 2011 budget fight, when he blurted out to House Majority Leader Eric I. Cantor (R.-Va.): “Eric, don’t call my bluff.”

This, of course was a bluff, and the subsequent Republican cave in gave us the Budget Control Act, and sequester—a device the president insisted on, apparently so he could blame it on Republicans.

Syria is the crisis and bluff event before us now......"

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