President Unleashes a Nationwide 'Community Organizing' Campaign

February 15, 2013

President Unleashes a Nationwide 'Community Organizing' Campaign

ByJanice Shaw Crouse

The president's State of the Union address (SOTU) was merely a prelude to a massive undertaking to go nationwide with his community organizing methods and objectives. This is a president who operates in campaign mode 24/7. One can make a strong case for his failure as a president, but it would be hard to claim that he lacks campaign skills. He learned at the feet of Chicago maestros. As soon as the obligatory SOTU speech was over, Mr. Obama set about revving his campaign engine -- this time for his agenda of nakedly expanding the role and reach of the federal government now that his re-election is history.

First off, he held a conference call with supporters across the nation. Thousands of activists were gathered at SOTU parties and are part of the new highly controversial activist organization, "Organizing for Action," that is designed as part PR, part campaign effort to enact and promote the president's agenda. The president's conference call was designed to mobilize the troops in the same way that he mobilized friends and neighbors in community organizing efforts in Chicago. In other words, he unleashed a nationwide community organizing effort to sell his policies for his second term: a scheme of radically transforming the governance of the nation, which will persist long after his second term ends. In addition tothe conference call mobilizing troops, the president is leaving for a whirlwind tour of two states -- North Carolina and Georgia -- that will be crucial in the upcoming mid-term elections.

These efforts are designed to build momentum for the "unfinished task" of "transforming" America into the president's design. Mr. Obama seems totally uninterested in governing; he certainly is unwilling to work with Congress. Instead, he is obsessed with campaigning and mobilizing people through rhetoric that panders, manipulates, and demagogues, without any regard for truth or reality (for example, raising the minimum wage, which will kill off entry-level jobs, when unemployment among those under 30 remains at untenable levels, or blaming Congress for the "sequester," when it was his idea in the first place).

These rhetorical tactics have successfully put the Republicans on the defensive and, without a similar bully pulpit they were rendered powerless until the mid-term elections of Mr. Obama's first term. He was able to, out of one side of his mouth, accuse the GOP of being unwilling to negotiate, while out of the other side of his mouth declare that, for him, there are things that are non-negotiable. Those tactics throughout his first term frustrated and stymied the Republicans. Now, in his second term, Mr. Obama is obviously trying to annihilate the GOP. With those who opposed his agenda neutered by accusations of racism and more at every turn during his first term, it seems the goal during the second is to crush them.

Mr. Obama's recurring mantra is that he will focus on the "needs of the middle class," yet every single day nearly 12,000 people are added to the food stamp program, food and gas prices escalate, we are distributing billions of dollars worth of "Obama phones" to millions who do not qualify as needy, and we now have a record number of people who are declared "disabled." That is not expanding the middle class or meeting the needs of the middle class. FDR was recently quoted by Thomas Del Beccaro in a Forbes article, "People who are hungry, people who are out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made." Perhaps Mr. Obama is not preparing for a dictatorship, but the groundwork is being laid for unprecedented government dependency; further, the creation of numerous White House Czars and the issuing of one after another Executive Order is enabled by a climate of crisis and the media-created illusion that the president is above criticism or censure. Indeed, Mr. Obama's image has moved from campaign pictures with an illusionary halo surrounding his head to a Newsweek cover declaring him the "Second-Coming" Messiah.

Numerous commentators noted that the SOTU marked the apex of Mr. Obama's power to command a nationwide audience. From here it is all downhill in terms of his ability to exert power through regular presidential channels. Thus, we should all be concerned about the expansion of his community organizing efforts to nationwide scope. While he has not reached out to his political adversaries, Mr. Obama is using every possible avenue to reach out to his supporters (referred to by conservative bloggers on the Internet as low-information voters) to mobilize and motivate them to demonstrate to the point of intimidating the Congress and the courts to acquiesce to his radical agenda.

While he pays lip service to the importance of bipartisan compromise, he is actually intent upon re-establishing the one-party control of Congress that he had during the first two years of his presidency. While he talks about "investing" in America, the "stimulus" spending schemes he engineered during his first term as payoffs to his cronies actually did nothing to reduce unemployment. His low-information supporters show no comprehension or concern about the fact that he is borrowing billions from the Chinese in order to give 20 F-16 fighters and 200 Abrams tanks to the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled government of Egypt. Nor do they see that while he nixes the Keystone Pipeline in the U.S., which would create a flood of ]new jobs here at home and move us away from dependency upon OPEC produced oil, he is underwriting Brazil's deep-water oil exploration.

The president declares that the debt problem is solved, but the national debt has increased 60 percent since he took office. He talks about ObamaCare reducing health care costs, full well knowing that the CBO estimates the costs of subsidies mandated by ObamaCare will increase by 29 percent. The clouds of Benghazi hang over the White House, and North Korea is flaunting its nuclear weapons tests. Mr. Obama studiously avoids mentioning family breakdown, decline of marriage, increase in fatherless children, and the overwhelming onslaught of crudity and vulgarity in the media, Internet, and entertainment industries.

But he sounds good. He packs the balcony with people representing the issues he wants to personalize, and he knows how to work a crowd. He has mastered community organizing. But if you listen closely and compare what he says to truth and reality, you'll be very concerned about the future of America.

Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., is a spokesperson for Concerned Women for America Political Action Committee.

Read more: Articles: President Unleashes a Nationwide 'Community Organizing' Campaign