How to explain Wisconsin and the huge victory margin for the now Again Elected Scott Walker, the massive defeat for the left and in fact, the victory margin actually increasing with his reelection versus his original election?

Ronald Reagan at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) of 1974, was asked if it was time for a third party and time to give up on the GOP and start a third party, or compromise with liberals within the GOP and stick it out despite our disappointments?

Conservatives were mad after the man who epitomized the liberal wing of the GOP, Governor Nelson Rockefeller had been appointed as the unelected President Gerald Ford’s new unelected Vice President.

It was just one more of a host of issues where the GOP “regulars” had said “you have to compromise”.  National Review Publisher William Rusher wrote “The Making of the New Majority Party” in 1974 and the talk was, the GOP is finished because it was too moderate, too unwilling to stick with principles and the moderates (ie. progressives, liberals etc.) who controlled it could never be defeated in the primary system.

When Ronald Reagan came to the 1974 CPAC the “third party “question was at the top of the list of concerns of many of the major leaders of the conservative cause and they desperately wanted to know if the popular California Governor would lead the revolt, bless it, or criticize the idea.

Reagan’s speech from 1974 is a classic for the ages: he said we should in campaigning and in governing “hold up a banner of no pale pastels, but bold and vibrant colors” and if we did that, we would win.

Reagan proved it by the huge margin of his wins running twice for Governor of California and for President of the United States.  And when these sort of attacks on him took place he always stood his ground, refused to back off and even pointedly said about his critics the now famous words, “there you go again.”

What happened in Wisconsin today is that Governor Scott Walker ignored all the people who said “compromise,” ignored all the people who urged him to listen and compromise with the smear artists who wanted to destroy his Governorship.  Instead, he listened to the advise of Ronald Reagan from 1974.  He stood his ground.  He said “there they go again.”

As I have discussed on these pages on several occasions, the more you speak out for our cause, the more the left will demonize you and they purposely make it personal, exactly as Saul Alinsky taught them to do.

What a lot of folks don’t recall is that Barack Obama isn’t just sympathetic to the Alinsky ideas – he was an Instructor at Alinsky’s Chicago Institute.

The Obama administration, his campaign, his party and his followers are populated with people who accept that this is the normal way to campaign – to lie about and smear the person you don’t agree with.

The reason that Alinsky so strongly recommended this smear method is simple: it so often works.

Sadly, it most especially works on good Christian-conservative “values voters” who are the least familiar with these tactics of the left and are often the most easily confused – which is highly rewarding to the secular-liberal-left forces doing the smear attacks.

For one serious example, you have but to google the phrase, “google bomb rick santorum” to see what I mean.  The left is disgusting, they make it personal, they aim to destroy their opponents, and this is no exaggeration.

If you think for a moment I am exaggerating then besides the above “google search” suggestion try this one too, google: “stephanie mencimer rick santorum.”  Stephanie is the character-assassin leftist “writer” at the very left, Mother Jones and she is rather popular for her most disgusting smears of this favorite target of the secular-liberal left.

The way to defeat the Alinsky smear is to do what our RED STATE community saw Erick Erickson do recently when he was subjected to SWATting – he BOOMERANGED it back on the left which was using it on him.  He pointed out what they were doing, stood his ground and let his enemies’ venom strengthen him and our cause.

It is one thing among friends to have some heated discussion where you disagree on tactics or even on strategy or focus.

But the left’s constant use of negative, demonizing and making it personal which in my earlier article I showed goes back to the Barry Goldwater campaign, which is demonstrated in George Orwell’s classic 1984 novel (the Two Minute Hate), shocks and immobilizes a lot of good people in our ranks.

That is so often because they have no idea what is happening.  As the Daily Caller reported three years ago, the left’s discussion group on the internet actually agreed that if you lie about Karl Rove and call him a racist, it will immobilize him, make a lot of his friends back away from him, and sow chaos and confusion in the right’s ranks.

Now I have never been a fan of Karl Rove, and I’d hesitate to discuss his role as a “conservative leader” but, the fact is he is a major hate figure to the left and they made use of Alinsky tactics to demonize him and to lie about him – and make it personal.  The purpose of their attacks on him was to hurt all of us – to hurt our conservative cause.

They make it personal but would say “its not personal, its business.”

The Daily Caller’s expose of their tactics was a splendid example of what I call the Alinsky Boomerang Effect (ABE).

ABE works because people get very angry when they realize that somebody is trying to manipulate them.  It is why “advertising,” and “lawyers” and “Congressmen” rank so low in public opinion polling.  These are all groups which the general public believes (in general) attempt to manipulate us for their own private gain.  And people resent it.

The Scott Walker victory happened because of the Alinsky Boomerang Effect!

Exit polling data showed that 67% thought that recall elections should only be held when there was some misconduct by a politician.  In that group, most said they had voted to retain Walker.

In the group that believed ANY reason is a good one for a recall election – less than 30% – that group overwhelmingly favored the recall and removal of Walker as Governor.

People saw that Scott Walker stood for something – a positive solution to an overspending problem.

And people saw that those who opposed him were simply demonizing him and making it personal, because he had stood for principle.

That explains why Barack Obama still has a majority in the polls in Wisconsin right this moment and is favored to keep the Badger State blue.

It isn’t that people all agree with Scott Walker’s proposal.

It is instead, that he offered no pale pastels but bold and vibrant colors, clearly showed that the left was attempting to manipulate people by their attempting to demonize him personally, and it made people angry.

The lesson for us conservatives is simple.

When the secular-liberal-left “advises” us to moderate our message and to compromise with the more “moderate” people (ie. them) ignore them.

When they attempt to personally demonize our leaders, smear people who speak out for our views, don’t just ignore them – counter attack strongly and use their venom to strengthen our cause by mobilizing our people and recruiting more to our ranks, and appealing to the fair minded people who resent these attempts to skip out of the issues debates and just smear our side.

It was a winning tactic for Ronald Reagan and last night it was a winning tactic in Wisconsin.

Here at RED STATE, some of my strongest articles have come under the sort of vitriolic,  attack which sounds like it was lifted right off the pages of Daily Kos and other leftwing internet hate sites.  It has been highly personal, very often with frank admissions that the critics haven’t even read the article whose author they are criticizing, they just want to jump in to help their friends on the attack.

I have defended my conservative views from such personal smears and the ABE tactic has actually doubled the readership of the articles which generated the “friendly advise” from people who freely admit they don’t like Christian conservatives, think we are all hypocrites, who said Rick Santorum and his supporters should “die a metaphorically violent death” and who even admit they don’t read the articles which they criticize in such strong terms and whose criticisms all include massive use of negative, personal pronouns about the undersigned writer.

Now I am always up for advise from fellow conservatives, particularly if I see they are able to write and generate any type of a following at RED STATE or anywhere else.  But the criticisms I am speaking of aren’t about the articles or the speech of those who speak for our cause.  It is always personal, exactly as Saul Alinsky suggested in Rules for Radicals.

They will use scorn, accusations of hypocrisy (rather foolish since we Christians already admit to being sinners – they simply betray their ignorance about our faith), any typos they can find (such as my 3200 word article where I admitted a mistake – the word “Spartacus” was incorrectly used instead of “Barabbas” – but for several days they continued attacking my article because of one word, corrected within 5 minutes of the article’s posting) and split hairs anywhere they can to argue  you are bad personally, you are awful, and no one should listen to you.

Another example: I mentioned the article where the “Spartacus” error appeared and was corrected in 5 minutes, contained 3,200 words.  Ever since then there are repeated references to my “boasting” how long my articles are.  That is so out of context as to be ludicrous but, the people who are reading only the comments section (which are, the other critics) just keep echoing it.

These smear tactics didn’t work on Ronald Reagan.  Didn’t work on Scott Walker in Wisconsin yesterday.  It never works when there is any kind of a fair contest and the conservative stands his ground and calls out the secular-liberal left for using the Alinsky tactics they always use.

We are going to see a heck of a lot more of that in the next five months and it will be rather frenzied as the leftwing hate sites whip up their folks who will compete with each other to make the most hateful comments not only about our cause and our top leaders but about any of us who raise our hand, our voice or our pen to defend and advance our cause and our candidates in 2012.

The left is going to become increasingly desperate.  I would never have predicted SWATting but I already KNOW that it is personal with them, it is hateful, it is in fact, as Ann Coulter’s book title so aptly says, DEMONIC.

Conservatives, stand your ground, point out the obvious – that the left makes it personal because they cannot debate issues and facts with us knowing they will lose – and harness the Alinsky BOOMERANG Effect.

There will be good people who make mistakes or who fall for these tactics and even take up the criticism, but that alters nothing.  The origin of these tactics is Alinsky and he took his cue from Communist organizing methods which have worked for many years before he wrote about it in one handy-dandy little book.

Hold up our banner of no pale pastels but bold and vibrant colors and with some organization, some funding and some seriously dedicated volunteers we can win this year.  If we don’t remember the Alinsky tactics coming at us and make use of the ABE to counter it we could very well lose and Barack Obama can finish off America with his “transformation” game plan after 2012.

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HanoverHenry of RED STATE is Pat Henry on Facebook, and I’m on the lookout for new friends there.  I maintain a 5x a week, weekdays writing schedule at RED STATE.

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