Obama and the Media Try to Alinsky John Boehner

When Obama went after John Boehner last week my commentary was "John Who??", because that's what most voters were probably thinking.  Minority Leader Boehner is not exactly a household name, even if he's the ranking Republican in the House.  The Ohio congressman with the Hollywood tan and radio announcer's voice has not been a high profile actor on the Washington stage.

However, that's all changing.  He's in line to become Speaker should the GOP regain power, and the White House, along with their lapdogs in the media, have decided to go full-Alinsky on him.  Rule #13 of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, the Bible for people like Obama and Hillary Clinton, goes like this:

13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and 'frozen.'...

Obama tried to do that with the speech this week, and today the media was in full cry. The NY Times ran a poorly researched hit piece, White House Spokeshole Robert Gibbs went after him on Twitter, and Bob Schieffer even tried to get him to agree to quit smoking if he became Speaker so he'd be a "good example" for Americans. Funny, I don't remember Schieffer asking Obama to quit smoking.

Fred Barnes at the Weekly Standard thinks this new-found attention on John Boehner will blow up in Obama's face:

President Obama has fallen into the John Boehner trap. By attacking Boehner last week—emphatically, repeatedly, and by name—the president made himself look desperate. And by treating Boehner as practically an equal, Obama elevated him. Boehner was delighted. Obama had helped him fill the leadership void among Republicans. For the president, that’s a negative twofer.

Obama has only himself to blame, since Boehner, the House Republican leader, didn’t knowingly set a trap. In criticizing Obama’s economic record in a speech in August and recommending a new policy, Boehner was pursuing his own blueprint for an increased public role in the weeks before the midterm elections. Now that he and Obama are irretrievably paired, Boehner will be a bigger and more visible presence than he had imagined.

Thanks to the president, Boehner has become the one Republican to whom the media must pay serious attention. When Obama speaks, reporters will turn to Boehner for reaction. When Boehner holds forth, the media will ask the White House to respond. This back-and-forth is not good for Obama. Presidents are at their best—their most authoritative, influential, and respected—when they transcend partisan politics. But far from rising above the bedlam of the campaign, Obama is wallowing in it. While it’s normal for presidents to take part in midterm elections, it’s important they do it the right way. If they sound like a TV attack ad, as Obama often has, they’re at their least effective.

For the Obama White House, the targeting of Boehner was a major operation. The location for Obama’s attack—Cleveland—was selected because that’s where Boehner had given his speech, two weeks earlier, urging the president to stop his “job killing” policies. The day before the president spoke, the White House put out the word that Obama would be going after Boehner the next day. In his speech, he aimed what Politico derisively referred to as “eight shout-outs” at Boehner.

A word comes to mind about the Boehner gambit—unpresidential. Karl Rove, President Bush’s political adviser, offered four words—“nutty, demeaning, useless, ill-conceived.” So far as I know, a premeditated assault by a president on the leader of the opposition (minority) party in the House is unprecedented. Would Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, or any other president even have considered such a tactic? I suspect not.

There's more at the link.

Obama thinks he can hold the House by making America afraid of Boehner, but as long as Nancy Pelosi continues to live, that's not gonna work. I guarantee you that when the two are compared Boehner's going to win most every time.  This latest assault is a sign of desperation by a president who simply has no idea what to do.  He has nothing to offer voters to persuade them to vote for him - his only hope is creating a bogeyman on the right to scare people away.