Guilt by association has been a time-honored tactic in American electioneering since the first decade of the Republic, when opponents of Thomas Jefferson tarred him as a bloodthirsty Jacobin, America’s own Robespierre. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt railed against the “economic royalists” and the “moneyed interests” during his 1936 campaign, his critics on the right saw a Bolshevik conspiracy at work. And for Gingrich and Obama’s critics, Alinsky fills the bill: a self-professed radical with a foreign-sounding name posthumously setting the agenda for an ostensibly radical president.

As with all conspiracy theories, the Alinsky-Obama link rests on a kernel of truth. For three years in the mid-1980s, Obama worked for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) of the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC), a group on Chicago’s South Side whose tactics — meeting with displaced steelworkers and marginalized public housing residents — were inspired by Alinsky. Obama read Alinsky and contributed an essay to a collection of essays on community organizing in Alinsky’s memory published in 1988.

By his own admission, Obama had a rough time being a community organizer. “Sometimes I called a meeting, and nobody showed up,” he recalled. “Sometimes preachers said, ‘Why should I listen to you?’ Sometimes we tried to hold politicians accountable, and they didn’t show up. I couldn’t tell whether I got more out of it than this neighborhood.” By the time he left Chicago for Harvard Law School, Obama was moving down a path that would take him far away from Alinsky-style movement building: He became a civil rights lawyer and law professor and, by the mid-1990s, launched a political career. It is telling that Obama did not mention Alinsky in his memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” or in his bestseller, “The Audacity of Hope,” though anti-Obama conspiracy theorists would, no doubt, find that silence as evidence of his crypto-Alinskyism.

For his part, Alinsky, who died in 1972, never had much patience for elected officials: Change would not come from top-down leadership, but rather from pressure from below. In his view, politicians took the path of least resistance. Among his targets were the Obamas of his day, from alderman to mayors to senators, for as he wrote in his 1971 bestseller, “Rules for Radicals”: “No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough.” It’s easy to imagine Alinsky as an advocate for “change we can believe in,” directing the unemployed and the victims of mortgage foreclosures to put pressure on the erstwhile community organizer now in the White House.

Whatever his influence on Obama, Alinsky had a complicated relationship to the political left. In the 1930s, Alinsky had little patience for the bona fide socialists and card-carrying Communists who were prominent advocates of labor and civil rights. He repudiated Marxism then. By the 1960s — his moment of greatest influence — Alinsky was even harsher in his criticism of the New Left. He viewed activists in Students for a Democratic Society as naive and impractical and denounced the tactics of their erstwhile comrades on the militant fringe, like the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground as doomed to failure for their violent tactics and unwillingness to compromise. Alinsky loathed dogmatism of all varieties.

But Alinsky also had little patience for mainstream liberals and European social democrats. He argued that the technocratic style of government by experts and bureaucrats was out of touch with “the people.” Before it became fashionable, he argued for citizen participation in politics and the devolution of power downward, away from Washington and into the hands of ordinary citizens. Though he was a secular Jew, Alinsky forged his closest alliance with Catholic advocates of social justice, whose views at the time could not be described in the easy binary of left versus right. If any political view appealed to Alinsky, it was the Catholic doctrine of “subsidiarity,” namely leaving governance to the smallest possible unit: the community. Alinsky counted among his closest friends the Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain (whose doctrine of personalism was one of the strongest influences on the young Polish cleric Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II).

Through it all, Alinsky called himself a radical. And he was. Alinsky drew from a deep current of indigenous radicalism in American politics, one that ran from Tom Paine (who was Alinsky’s favorite founding father), through the incipient labor movement (early in his career, Alinsky worked with the Congress of Industrial Organizations), and the civil rights struggle in the 1960s.

In the truest sense of the term, Alinsky was a populist, who sided with those whom he called “the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores.” Alinsky’s small-d democracy shaped his strategy. He argued that leaders had to start by listening to ordinary people, not directing them from the top down. In Chicago, Alinsky launched organizing efforts among the ethnic workers in Chicago’s meatpacking plants, whose plight had been made infamous by Upton Sinclair’s “Jungle.” In the early 1960s, he launched a campaign to improve the quality of life for the black residents of Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood whose housing stock had been gutted by absentee landlords and whose jobs had disappeared because of the corporate search for cheap labor and high profits. And just before his death, he called for a campaign to tap the disaffected lower middle class and turn their anger away from minorities and toward “specific issues — taxes, jobs, consumer problems, pollution — and from there move on to the larger issues: pollution in the Pentagon and the Congress and the board rooms of the megacorporations.”

Alinsky believed that the key to organizing success was citizen participation, letting the people set the agenda, not setting it for them. Alinsky’s goal was nothing short of unleashing the power of the people to “create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace, cooperation, equal and full opportunities for education, full and useful employment, health, and the creation of those circumstances in which men have the chance to live by the values that give meaning to life.”

It is Alinsky’s populism that is most threatening to Gingrich and the right—even if it is a far cry from Obama’s own political agenda. As political scientist Corey Robin has argued, “[c]onservatism is the theoretical voice of this animus against the agency of the subordinate classes. It provides the most consistent and profound argument for why the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, to govern themselves or the polity. Submission is their first duty; agency, the prerogative of elites’ hierarchy.”

Here is the root of the right’s suspicion of Alinsky. His goal was giving the dispossessed agency—empowering them to “fight privilege and power, whether it be inherited or acquired.” In Gingrich’s view, by contrast, the “have nots” are fundamentally incapable, responsible for their own fate because of their immorality, indolence and inertia. They will only be uplifted through the discipline of the market. Put poor elementary school children to work to instill in them a work ethic; cut welfare to promote “personal responsibility,” take away food stamps and reduce unemployment benefits so that the jobless are forced to work. The flip side is a call to augment the power of “job creators” by keeping their capital gains and estate taxes low. In this vision, change comes from above, not from below, and wealth whether inherited or acquired is a social good. Gingrich versus Alinsky is not a battle over ideas; it’s about power, who should have it and who should not. That’s why 40 years after his death, the Chicago radical remains on the right’s enemies list.

Thomas J. Sugrue is author of Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race. He is David Boies Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. 

First, some context. The news broke last March that Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. is under federal investigation into whether it has complied with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The act makes it illegal to bribe foreign officials to obtain business deals.

The investigation reportedly came about after a breach-of-contract lawsuit was filed by former Sands executive Steven Jacobs that floated the possibility of an FCPA violation by Sands:

Jacobs alleges, among other things, that Adelson wanted him to conduct secret investigations of the dealings of the Macau government officials to dig up dirt so they could be intimidated, and that Adelson wanted the corporation to continue using the services of a Macau attorney with a bad reputation “despite concerns that [the individual's] retention posed serious risk under the criminal provisions of the United States code commonly known as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.”

A confidential September 2009 cable sent from the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong back to Washington describes Adelson’s business practices in Macau. Unlike its competitor Wynn, Adelson’s Sands was lobbying Chinese government officials in Beijing rather than focusing exclusively on local officials in Macau, according to the cable. The issues of concern to Sands included “foreign labor visas, gaming oversight and regulation, infrastructure development, and perceived interference in personnel management decisions affecting Macau resident workers.”

The cable goes on to describe Adelson’s personal interest in direct engagement with Beijing and the intriguing matter of the “Adelson Center for U.S.-China Enterprise” in Beijing, a nonprofit that was to be financed with a whopping $100 million. A former Sands executive told an unnamed American official that the Chinese government forced Sands to close the center following government inquiries about “funds transfer mechanisms used by [Sands] to establish the now-closed USD 100 million Adelson Center.” The nature of those mechanisms is not specified.

The cable continues that Sands’ “current efforts in Beijing are designed in part to offset these early ‘missteps’” — but there is no elaboration on what the “missteps” were. Sands did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As for what the Adelson Center was supposed to do, the New Yorker reported in June 2008 that it was to act as a kind of facilitator for U.S. businesses looking to operate in China:

In early August [2008], during the Olympic Games, Las Vegas Sands will launch the Adelson Center for U.S.-China Enterprise, in Beijing, which seems positioned to wield substantial influence. If you were an American businessman coming to China, the Sands’s Bill Weidner testified at the Suen trial, “you might need a logistics partner to deliver your goods. You might need a manufacturer to manufacture your goods. You might need a law firm. You might need an accounting firm. Whatever it would take to get you involved in business in China, we would-the center would help arrange for you.”

Here is the logo for the center from a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; it’s not clear that it was ever used:

Below is the relevant section of the cable. Another interesting moment comes further down in the cable when Sands executive Jacobs (who later sued the company) is quoted as saying that a new regulation about how much Macau casino junket operators could be paid “will be routinely violated.”

LVS [Las Vegas Sands] Macau President and CEO Steve Jacobs told EP Chief  on September 17 that LVS restarted its government outreach  efforts in Beijing over the past several months, and achieved  “great success” in building direct relationships with senior  officials.  Jacobs said LVS’s direct engagement in Beijing is  designed to build goodwill, explain the company’s current and  planned contributions to Macau’s economy and society, and encourage freer movement of PRC residents into Macau.  LVS CEO and majority shareholder Sheldon Adelson highly values  direct engagement in Beijing, according to Jacobs, especially  given the impact of Beijing’s visa policies on the company’s  growing mass market operations in Macau.

LVS’s pre-Olympic outreach efforts were suspended in early 2009, after the PRC forced the company to close its  newly established non-profit Adelson Center for U.S.-China Enterprise in Beijing.  The PRC’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange in China, according to LVS’s latest quarterly report published in August 2009, “made inquiries and requested and obtained documents relating to certain payments made by the company’s wholly foreign-owned enterprises to counterparties and other vendors in China.” A  former LVS senior executive told Econoff that the PRC inquiries relate primarily to funds transfer mechanisms used by LVS to establish the now-closed USD 100 million Adelson Center.  LVS’s current efforts in Beijing are designed in part to offset these early “missteps.”

November’s still a long way away, but it’s hard to imagine President Obama losing Florida after the slime-fest we’ve just witnessed. Both Gingrich and Romney are seeing their negatives go up as the campaign goes on, while Obama’s approval rating continues to climb. I think the president is largely responsible for his ratings rise, because he’s brought the fight to the GOP since the debt-ceiling debacle.

But one thing Romney clearly had going for him when the race began, in the face of Tea Party suspicion about his conservative credentials, was that voters viewed him benignly. Between revelations about his tax rate plus his Bain Capital work, and Gingrich’s relentless attacks, Romney’s losing the main thing he had going for him, his generic affability. In November, polls showed Romney beating Obama by 13 points in Florida; recent polls give Obama the edge, 44 to 36 percent. If the hate-off continues, it will hurt him in November, and not just in Florida.

Romney pretends to disagree. “A competitive primary does not divide us, it prepares us, and we will win,” he told the cheering crowd of Florida supporters Tuesday night. Deep-pockets Mitt also claimed he was running “a people’s campaign,” even though his anti-Gingrich ads outnumbered pro-Gingrich ads by a staggering 13,000 to 200 in Florida.

So does Gingrich have a prayer? Not really. But he’s still picking up the remnants of the Tea Party brigade. Rick Perry, of course, endorsed him right away, Herman Cain (hilariously) joined him this week. And just as she did in South Carolina, Sarah Palin held back from formally endorsing Gingrich, but again told voters they ought to vote for him in this race, just to keep the contest going (and bug liberals, as though liberals wouldn’t be elated to see Obama run against Newt). What’s she up to? I think Palin and other far-right Gingrich supporters would be thrilled to bloody Romney and see him lose to Obama. That would let them argue that GOP moderates are electoral poison, and only a sharp turn right will bring the party back from the dead. In fact, if Romney is the nominee and loses to Obama, it will likely be because he stiffed independents and moderates to make that sharp turn right, turning his back on climate change and his own healthcare reform, as well as running to Gingrich’s right on immigration with his pledge to veto the DREAM act.

No matter what Gingrich or Palin does, Romney will also be a tough sell in November, because he’s so undeniably Mr. 1 Percent (or I guess Mr. .0006 percent), the face of the forces of wealth Americans are beginning to scowl at. In his victory speech Tuesday he took a moment to recall that Obama promised that if he didn’t improve the economy, voters should make him a one-term president, and he declared, “Well, I’m here to collect.” It wasn’t quite “I like to be able to fire people,” but it did sound like the landlord or the bill collector at the door. Romney continues to seem like he’s doing his best imitation of a human being, but he hasn’t quite mastered it yet.

But Gingrich’s rambling, grandiose speech went off the rails. The crowd waved signs saying “46 states to go,” and their man told them “we are going to contest every place and we are going to win.” He never actually “conceded” to Romney; the speech was a long, bizarre peroration on the things he’d do his first day in office, when he’s sworn in as president, which a reality-based candidate would know will never happen. It was mostly garden-variety GOP stuff – repeal Obamacare, Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley. But it also included a wet kiss for Sheldon Adelson — a promise “to instruct the State Department, that day, to open the embassy in Jerusalem” – plus a generic red-meat promise to repeal “every anti-religious act of the Obama administration, as of that moment.” Even his daughter, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, wore a frozen, pained smile as the speech wore on; the crowd’s clapping ebbed with every delusional promise.

The night hit bottom, though, when Gingrich’s former communications director Rick Tyler, now running his friendly super PAC, told Rachel Maddow and Rev. Al Sharpton on MSNBC that the Democrats were the party that aborted black babies, and that African-Americans live in housing projects and collect welfare checks, and need the movie “Red Tails” because they lack role models – as though that guy in the White House isn’t a black role model, one of millions. It was the GOP id unleashed.

If you watch television for 30 seconds you’ll hear pundits (including me) grasp to compare the ongoing 2012 GOP primary to the long 2008 Democratic contest. But there’s really no comparison. The 2008 Clinton-Obama showdown had its bitter moments, but nothing like the unrelenting nastiness of this race. And people who argued that the extended contest was pumping up voter interest in the November election and building and mobilizing the Democratic base turned out to be right.

The GOP hate-off isn’t having that effect: Turnout in the first three 2012 contests was flat, and in Florida it was down from 2008. Given the conventional MSM wisdom that the Tea Party-dominated Republican base is some newly invigorated electoral powerhouse that can’t wait to get to the polls to turn out Barack Hussein Obama, you’d expect a whole lot more people to be casting votes as the 2012 campaign gets into gear. But then the MSM has taken the Tea Party way too seriously from the start. Still, it’s hard for any of us to read the new GOP. There will be a rote quality to the coverage from here on out, because Romney’s nomination is almost certain. Yet we still have to pay attention to see how far the right wing will go to destroy the former Massachusetts moderate who has indulged their every demand – except that he leave the race.

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