Saul Alinsky and The Resignation of Sarah Palin

Bill Whittle talks about the Destruction of Sarah Palin, with a warning that it could happen to other decent people in politics, on Afterburner. Lots of ideas stuffed into 13 minutes. Including why false accusations against an innocent person are often more damaging than true accusations against a guilty person.

Available in print here:

. . . One of the Rules for Radicals is Make the enemy live up to his/her own book of rules. Think about the genius of that. Just let that sink in. When a Republican has an ethics scandal, it’s “hypocrisy” and “double standards” and all the rest. But when a Clinton or a Pelosi or a Charley Rangel or a Chris Dodd or a Barney Frank or a William Jefferson has an ethics scandal, no one bats an eye. Why? Because of course they’re immoral! They’re Democrats.

Alinski could see that moral people have to be held to moral standards when immoral people do not. We’d better learn a lesson from this, right quick. . . .

. . . . And if we do lose to these kind of tactics, there will be no more decent people left in politics. As of today, we’re one short already.

Worth your time and thought.

Update: Sissy Willis reminds us that maybe Sarah Palin understood the Alinsky crowd better than they thought. And maybe "The Beltway media can't understand someone not consumed with presidential ambition,"

VDH from almost a year ago:

Palin in empirical fashion bucked the Republican establishment and the old-boy network when she thought it was unreasonable; Obama never figured out or at least never questioned Tony Rezko or the Chicago machine, Trinity Church or the Pelosi-Kennedy liberal mantra — unless it proved advantageous. Palin draws on everything from position papers on ANWR to how to keep four screaming kids fed and bathed; Obama on Harvard Law Review and dispensing more public money to more Chicago interest groups.

That’s a simplification, but also an answer to the old Euripidean question “What is wisdom?”