The Steve Bannon Bogeyman–58hj., b58
Bannon, who stepped in to serve as CEO of Trump’s campaign this summer, was just named chief strategist and senior advisor of the president-elect last week.
Why are the anti-Trumpers right to attack Steve Bannon? Because he is their worst nightmare.
He is a nightmare not only for Democrats who supported Hillary, but also for those renegade Republicans who signed up for the #NeverTrump suicide mission. Steve is more intelligent than they are. He also commands formidable street smarts and political savvy. In short, he is a one-man, industrial-strength swamp-draining apparatus.
More than anyone else on the political scene at the moment, it is Steve Bannon who will take Donald Trump’s central campaign promises — on Obamacare, on immigration, on the economy — and assure that they move from the realm of possibility to the realm of settled policy.
Politicians say a lot of inspiring things on the hustings. None manage to do everything they promise. Some never do much of anything. Donald Trump seems poised to get a lot done, and it is Steve Bannon who will instantiate the hammer with which Donald Trump will address the many outstanding nails he will confront when he takes office.
It is perfectly understandable that Trump’s opposition fears and loathes Steve Bannon. They would have to be insensate morons not to appreciate that it will be largely through Bannon’s instrumentality that Trump will accomplish his program.
But that is no excuse for the campaign of hysterical calumny directed at Steve Bannon’s character.
Readers of Saul Alinsky will remember Number 13 of his Rules for Radicals:
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.
We have lately witnessed a florid example of this mendacious Alinskyite tactic in the disgusting attacks on Bannon for being a white supremacist, anti-Semitic spokesman for the “alt-right.”
That’s one oddity. The other oddity is how futile their efforts are. The whole lumbering, moralistic anti-Trump/Bannon machine is like a gigantic gasoline-powered antique truck with a broken transmission and faulty valves. The anti-Trumpers and Bannon-bashers stomp down on the accelerator, but all that happens is that the engine roars and smoke billows out of the tailpipe. The wheels don’t spin. There is no traction. The large, decrepit vehicle goes nowhere. It’s all sound and fury, signifying irrelevance.
source–roger kimball, pj media,
conservativepolitics1 