David Horowitz talked to Frank Gaffney today on Secure Freedom Radio about what to expect in President Obama’s second term, where Horowitz warned that while the government through health care reform can “control your health, now they’re going to control your environment.” He said that the movement for environmental protection is America’s “biggest threat” because it is working with Obama to impose government “control over everybody’s life” under the excuse of preventing climate change, “the chimera of the left.” He even brought up the debunked claim that Obama will enforce a light switch tax.
The far-right author demanded that Republicans read his book Radicals: Portraits of a Destructive Passion and learn that Obama is following the playbook of Saul Alinsky. Horowitz details how Saul Alinsky came up with the absolutely novel idea that politicians should make compromises, try to pass their policy agenda when they can and run negative advertisements against their opponents.
Horowitz also seems to be under the impression that Romney did not respond to any of the negative ads against him and did not go negative against Obama. “Character assassination is the middle name of every Democratic political operative,” Horowitz maintained, “What is wrong with Republicans that they don’t understand that this is a war? And the other side is playing for keeps.”
Horowitz: Alinsky advised, do what’s possible, not your ideal, make compromises, which Obama has done and he’s turned off some of the left because of it. SO he’s going to continue to fund the left with taxpayer money, that’s a given, that’s where the Stimulus money went, it went to the unions, he’s going to fund the unions. He’s going to pursue this other chimera of the left, the climate change, because it means control over energy policies. They actually want to control when you turn on your light switch, they want to tax you for the energy that you use. I have to tell you, this is the biggest threat, that environmental movement. That’s the powerful movement because it means control over everybody’s life. They won Obamacare and control your health, now they’re going to control your environment.
Gaffney: And energy. David, what would you recommend to the loyal opposition as to what it should be doing to contend with this radical and his agenda for the next four years?
Horowitz: Read my book. The big problem here is conservatives understand policy issues very well, they’re wonks like Paul Ryan. Romney by the way could have won this election if he had made Rubio his vice presidential candidate, as much as I admire Paul Ryan, it was Rubio we should’ve picked for the politics of it. But the main thing is you have to understand your enemy, it’s not good enough to do the policy, people never get to hear the policies. Romney never appeared to half the electorate, what appeared were all those negative campaign ads and that’s just what politics is about. You have got to understand how dedicated and vicious your opponents are. Stop calling them liberals and hopefully some people will read my book because my book is portraits of threes people so you understand who they are.
Gaffney: Right. One of the things that just jumps off of the pages is something that we saw play out, right out of Saul Alinsky’s playbook, I think it was “Rules for Radicals #11,” in which he said, select a target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it. If that wasn’t the script for taking down Mitt Romney I don’t know what was. Horowitz: Yes. Character assassination is the middle name of every Democratic political operative, and everybody who is a conservative knows it, we’ve all been victims of it. It’s not a secret, everybody said, everybody said, this will be the dirtiest campaign ever and Obama has nothing to run on, he has to demonize Romney. And when he did that, did the Romney campaign respond? No. What is wrong with Republicans that they don’t understand that this is a war?
Gaffney: They have to read your book, that’s for sure.
Horowitz: And the other side is playing for keeps.
