Freedom Line Blog

Conservatives could probably learn a thing or two from Saul Alinsky. Bear with me here. While Alinsky may have promoted thuggish means in the service of repugnant ends, it doesn’t mean the man didn’t have some genuine insights into political strategy that — applied with a dose of morality — could help the right.

One of Alinsky’s tactics (to be specific, it’s actually part of the 11th rule for radicals) is to personalize attacks on your opposition (i.e., go after a specific individual rather than an abstract entity). This also works, however, in reverse. When you’re trying to portray the suffering caused by big government, use a human interest example rather than generically inveighing against state excesses.

My friends over at the Beacon Center of Tennessee (I worked there back when it was the Tennessee Center for Policy Research) have put this principle to great use in a new video that makes both the moral and economic case for abolishing the Volunteer State’s death tax. In the story of Roger Blackwood, a 77 year old Tennessee farmer whose family stands to lose the products of his life’s work because of the estate tax, they’ve found a compelling narrative that underscores an important point: the estate tax amounts to the outright theft of a family’s legacy. This is, by my lights, utterly brilliant:

Conservatives can be forgiven for thinking that every member of the liberal establishment has read and memorized Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.  The subject of Hillary Clinton’s college senior thesis and the inspiration for a young Barack Obama’s zeal for community organizing, the Rules stand alongside Chairman Mao’s little red book in the Leftist’s canon.  But time and again, the liberals running the Democratic Party into the ground seem to be as clueless about the rules as they are about the laws of economic gravity.

Consider Rule #12: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.  On some level, liberals knew this when they spent the better part of a year castigating Republicans as ‘The Party of No’.  They knew that the public wouldn’t accept the GOP as a credible governing party until it produced a constructive alternative.  (Though worthy of support, Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Roadmap for America’s Future has yet to gain widespread acceptance in the GOP caucus.)  With this week’s ‘Pledge to America’ the GOP is now a party with a constructive alternative.

The field is open, liberals.  And time is dwindling.