Conservatives need to organize like the unions

Conservative pundits often remark with derision that Obama’s only experience was as a community organizer, but that community organizing machine has been kicking their butts. While it may be entertaining to watch the conservative movement self-destruct with Karl Rove defending his support of Tea Party candidates and Mary Beth Martin accusing him of trying to get them ejected, conservatives listen up.  The secrets of community organizing are about to be unveiled.  It is time to use the strategy of the left against them.

Community organizing is an offshoot of union organizing, and while you may laugh stating the obvious — union membership is down, how good can they be?  The answer is very good.  Unions win over 70 percent of their organizing efforts.  However, since Obama failed to push EFCA thru, there is no law that forces a company to ever reach an agreement with a union in a contract.  Thus, over 50 percent of those people who vote a union in, never see a contract.

Eventually the workers will decertify, or the union walks away.

Union organizers are trained in their trade.  Unlike the campaign managers who come straight out of college and intern with a campaign, political, party, or in an elected official’s office, organizers are out there amongst the people whom they hope to win over.  They can dedicate months, or even years to winning them over to their cause.  It is important to understand the methods they use.  It is a choreographed courtship.

The first step: agitate.  In the workplace, an organizer can take an employee’s bad day at work and make it into a bad career choice.  If an employee shows up late to work and receives verbal warning, an organizer is trained to escalate what would normally be a minor incident.  They would tell the worker they have no voice in the workplace and management disrespects them.  In other words they would convince the employee that they had been wronged.  Then you present yourself as the savior.  “If the union represented you, management could not take advantage of you like this.”

In the most recent campaign, the far right conservatives wanted to strip women of their right to their own bodies by not allowing them birth control for free. Then, we were introduced to Sandra Fluke.  Something as simple and inconsequential as birth control became a war on women.  The response from the conservatives was to attack Sandra Fluke stating that she could easily afford her own contraception.  The GOP completely proved the left’s point by attacking Sandra Fluke — a woman.

If a union can keep the argument an emotional one, they will win every campaign.  Three steps to combat this type of organizing activity are: 1) ventilate — allow Ms. Fluke to air out her grievance; 2) commiserate — “ I understand how you must feel”  (this takes the wind out of an inside agitator when the opposing side understands and in some cases even agrees); and 3) remediate — “I can understand that attending a prestigious university like Georgetown could cause a financial hardship and that in turn might make purchasing birth control difficult.

I know that in Clark County, Nevada, the county will supply birth control for a reduced rate or even free if you can show financial hardship.  Have you checked to see if your county offers that?  Perhaps the Fluke war on women might have taken a different turn.
Obama learned at the knee of the union.   He acknowledged that when he addressed SEIU and said, “I was right beside you every day organizing in the community.”

Rebecca Smith is a contributor to The Brenner Brief and an expert on union issues. Twitter: @unionhypocrisy

The conservative movement needs to cultivate their base that they seem to ignore every day except Election Day.  The GOP needs to have “organizers” within the communities.

For example, unions have an initiative where “volunteers” go to schools and offer career guidance for students who are not college bound.  What are the conservative equivalents?

The organizer’s motto is that the indoctrination is more important than the education.  Why are Republicans never in the field with community action groups?  Why have they left the indoctrination up to the left?

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