Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun-Times: Historian Newt Gingrich needs a lesson about Saul Alinsky

Good column, quoting Alinsky biographer Sanford D. Horwitt.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/10175065-452/historian-newt-gingrich-needs-a-lesson-about-saul-alinsky.html

On CNN Sunday, Gingrich said, “One of the reasons I think people in South Carolina voted for me was the belief that I could debate Obama head-to-head, that I could convey conservative values and that I could in an articulate way explain what American exceptionalism was all about and why the values that he believes in, the Saul Alinsky radicalism that is at the heart of Obama, are a disaster.”

Horwitt, who obtained Alinsky’s FBI files when he researched his book, said “Alinsky was emphatically not a Marxist, he was not a Communist ever. He was a true American populist. And here is a bit of an irony. I think that Newt right now, some of Newt’s strongest appeal is his populism.”

-snip-

“. . . Alinsky had no interest in replacing the basic system in this country, political or economic. What he loved about this country is you had the freedom to change a lot of the rules, meaning that you could get a seat at the table for low-income people or even middle-class people,” Horwitt said.

In Chicago, Alinsky’s flamboyant tactics fighting slumlords and bad schools drew attention. But he operated with important support, even as he battled with the first Mayor Daley. Horwitt points out that Alinsky started his Industrial Areas Foundation in 1940 with a $10,000 grant from Marshall Field III and was backed by two Chicago cardinals — Samuel Stritch and Albert Meyer.