Saul Alinsky disciples are driving Palin backers batty

Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose. —Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

All that Sarah Palin and her conservative, Taxed Enough Already (TEA) Party patriot brethren want to promote is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness via limited, responsive government and low taxation. Their political opposition counters by talking about everything but: Bristol and Levi, ethics complaints, Palin's clothes and hair, Trig, Tina Fey satire as documentary, and now, SarahPAC's purchase of Going Rogue to give as a premium or thank-you gift to $100 donors ("so that explains how the book became a best seller!" anonymous Palin-haters breathlessly proclaim on Twitter and in the comment sections of countless obscure web sites). Palin backers in turn parry every thrust, some even drawing fire (and ire) on themselves.

"The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition," said Alinsky in his seminal Rules for Radicals. "It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.

"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it...as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the 'others' come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target." Sound familiar?

The radical left is using the 24/7 nature of Internet communications against Palin supporters and other conservatives, by implementing Alinsky's rules to a degree that he could not have imagined when he published them in 1971. Expert negotiators understand that a tactic perceived is no longer effective. Conservatives must study how Obama's camp is using Alinsky's rules, or risk becoming casualties of them.