Jeffrey Lord: Remember Sarah Palin?

Welcome to the club, Gov. Walker
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The American Spectator's Jeffrey Lord, on the AmSpec Blog, sees Alinsky's Rule 13 in action:

I know you can remember. She made liberals foam. Go nuts. Crazy nuts. And when some of us tried to point out that she was following a path trod by other conservatives from a young Richard Nixon to an old Ronald Reagan to a middle-aged Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush and Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter -- the path of most hated conservative in the land -- we were told (indignantly!) that this wasn't so…that it really was all about Sarah herself. She was just…just…well…fill in the epithet of your choice.

Suddenly…Sarah Palin turns out NOT to be the most hated conservative in America. Uh-uh. The crown has been rudely snatched and jammed on someone else's head. That honor has now reverted to a white guy. This one named… Scott Walker. Shoved into the coliseum as the lions roar… he's Hitler. He's Mussolini. He's a Nazi, a Fascist, a racist, a tool of billionaires. He's so bad he makes Sarah Palin look reassuringly plain old vanilla.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but this is what happens when a conservative or even someone who is not a movement conservative but flies enough conservative colors -- becomes the focus of left-wing wrath. What we are watching in real time is the demonization of Scott Walker by the left…a process recently devoted exclusively to Sarah Palin and before that to George W., the talk radio stars, Ann Coulter, the Fox crew.

The irony is that this process is now becoming familiar to more and more people -- more people get the game. Which has two interesting side effects.

One, people begin to realize what the real game is -- discrediting conservatism itself by using one star as a target. The old Alinsky trick of picking the target, freezing it, personalizing it etc.

And two -- by focusing on the newest target with such fierce animosity, it makes the last target fade into… dare we say it… the comfort of a reassuringly familiar face...

We have just one minor disagreement with Jeffrey Lord. When the left is done with Scott Walker, it's not bloody likely that "someone now unknown" will be thrown into the middle of Alinsky Memorial Coliseum to face the lions. It will be "deja vu all over again," because they don't consider the demonization of Gov. Palin to be complete. As Aaron Goldstein succinctly phrased it at the IC Blog:

"Make no mistake. Sarah Palin is still in the crosshairs."

This goes double if she gets into the 2012 presidential race as expected.

- JP