Casey Stengel, a baseball legend who played on five teams and managed four, said: "It's easy to get good players. Getting them to play together, that's the hard part."
What's true in sports is definitely true in politics — even more so.
Many say that 'tis the season for GOP rivalry, but when does inference turn to infighting? When does public debate abandon solidarity? And when does friendly bantering turn into friendly fire that is fuel for our foes?
I know that we are in a GOP presidential race. I understand the tactics to win a regular election, but this is no typical run for the presidency. There is a progressive insurrection under way, and at the heart of progressives' political warfare is the lack of conservative consensus.
GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, told an audience in Iowa last week, "President Obama is legitimately and authentically a Saul Alinsky radical." I completely agree, and so do most people who truly understand Obama's origins and political philosophies. Even The New York Times, back in August 2009, wrote, "Saul Alinsky (was a) Chicago activist and writer whose street-smart tactics influenced generations of community organizers, most famously the current president."
Alinsky's bible for community organizers is "Rules for Radicals," the principles of which can be viewed in almost every action of the left, including the present White House. For example, in the chapter on "power tactics," the fourth tactic is: "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules." Whereas conservatives regard congruity as commendable, Alinsky considers it an opportunity for raising disdain among the public and infighting among enemies, because no one can perfectly live up to his or her own message.
This is where Alinsky's fifth rule follows and applies: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." And the best missile in that arsenal is the friendly fire (ridicule) caused within the enemies' own camps.
The goal is "conflict among themselves" — what Alinsky calls "power cannibalism," "a road from which there is no turning back" because it "permits only temporary truces." Indeed, according to Alinsky, they will suffer a form of selfish implosion while attempting to appear selfless as "individual units attempt to exploit the general threat for their own special benefit."
Alinsky concludes, "Here is the vulnerable belly of the status quo."
Tragically, by their infighting, the GOP candidates are playing right into Obama and Alinsky's hands. The fact is that while the majority of GOP candidates think they merely are competing for the prize of the nomination, they are running exact plays from Alinsky's playbook, often pitted by the mainstream media and the White House, who are playing them like pawns, with their questions, accusations and innuendoes.
Consider how the Alinsky scorecard has read just recently.
According to The Associated Press, last week, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's camp "announced a $3.1 million TV ad campaign in Iowa beginning (Dec. 9) that includes the new commercial assailing Gingrich on a host of fronts."
On the other hand, look at what Gingrich said at a Nov. 28 town hall meeting in Charleston, S.C.: "I do approach this whole campaign, I think, differently from everybody else. We have a number of friends who are also running. We have no opponents except Barack Obama. I think that's very important. I think (Abraham) Lincoln was very wise, as was captured in a book called 'Team of Rivals.' ... Literally everybody who was his opponent ended up in the Cabinet because he needed all of them in order to be able to put together the political power during the crisis that we faced. I would say the same thing. I don't know of a single person currently running who wouldn't be a very effective member of an administrative team and who doesn't have real talent and, in some way ... a unique strength. So I don't have any opponents on the Republican side."
Now, you tell me, which type of leadership is going to win us back the White House, one that rallies the country or one that divides the house?
The Republican presidential candidates are not the only ones being duped to Alinsky's schemes; many of the conservative media and much of the public are, too. While we slander our own presidential candidates within the borders of our First Amendment rights, we inadvertently abandon the strategy to win the White House.
Every conservative I know agrees that any GOP candidate would bring better leadership than that which we currently have in the White House. I firmly believe that our candidates' positive attributes outweigh any of their negatives.
With about three weeks until the Iowa caucuses, it's high time that we quit allowing the left and even our own preferences and prejudice to polarize us any further. It's time we lay down our egos and our innate bent and fight to unify for our republic's sake. It's time we elevate our own preferred candidate without trashing the others. It's time we turn the tables and beat the progressives at their own game by overturning their own rules — Alinsky's "rules"!
If we are going to win the war for the White House, it's going to be solely in our ability to rally together and keep our scopes on the current occupant of the White House, not by aiming at one another.
So let's flood the media and blogosphere with discussion about the strengths each candidate possesses. Let's keep the focus on real solutions to get this country back on track. Let's live out the acronym TEAM and show progressives and the world that "together everyone achieves more," namely winning back the White House and Senate and maintaining a majority in the House of Representatives, which would save our republic.
United we stand; divided we most certainly will fall.
Follow Chuck Norris through his official social media sites, on Twitter @chucknorris and Facebook's "Official Chuck Norris Page." He blogs at http://chucknorrisnews.blogspot.com.
