Why Conservatives Will Miss ACORN

[marmar]

from the American Prospect:



Why Conservatives Will Miss ACORN
The news that the embattled community-organizing group will restructure has the right in mourning -- after all, the organization provided the perfect locus for conservative panic.

Adam Serwer | February 25, 2010 | web only



On Monday, news broke that the embattled community-organizing group ACORN had "dissolved as a national structure," with individual chapters severing their relationship to one another. It turned out not to be true -- ACORN still exists as a national organization, but several of its large state chapters, including the ones in New York, Massachusetts, and California, have become independent organizations.

"It's no secret that we've been weakened by a whole series of right-wing attacks that have made it hard for us to do work and get funding," National ACORN spokesperson Kevin Whelan told the Prospect on Monday. "So organizers and leaders are having to figure out how to carry out fighting foreclosures organizing their communities." Whelan added that while the new organization will be staffed with former ACORN people, "there is no formal or structural relationship ? between ACORN and these new organizations that have been announced."

You'd think that conservatives would see ACORN's restructuring in the wake of financial difficulties as a victory, but the immediate response looked more like grief-stricken denial. Over at Andrew Breitbart's Web site Big Government, where last September conservative activist James O'Keefe published a series of heavily edited videos that appear to show ACORN workers giving advice on how to evade taxes while running a prostitution ring, the news was greeted with disbelief. "ACORN is attempting to perpetrate yet another spectacular fraud on the American people in order to keep tax dollars and foundation grants flowing into its coffers," wrote one conservative writer on Breitbart's Web site. "Congressional funding of ACORN's election fraud and racketeering business is no longer guaranteed, so ACORN is trying to pass off various state chapters as 'new' groups."

The statement encompassed everything the right feels about ACORN -- from the conspiracy-laden speculation to the creeping panic that ACORN might not exist to kick around anymore. ACORN hysteria is a bitter cocktail of white anxiety, economic populism, and the inability to cope with the right's own electoral defeats. Since 2008, ACORN has stood for everything bad about America.

........(snip)........

The case against ACORN fell apart, but that didn't change ACORN's fate. Whelan suggested that the organization will remain a national one but that it's likely more state chapters will break off because of difficulties paying their bills. For now, progressive organizations serving minority and working-class communities have learned that Democrats in Congress won't take their own side in a fight. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=why_conservatives_will_miss_acorn

[ck4829]

1. The right wing always needs a scapegoat to function

[libodem]

2. I agree with your opinion

Can't you just see the playbook.
#1 Start fake teabag astroturf community organizing for our side
#2 Trash and scrap any progressive program that might help organize poor, minority, real grass roots
#3 Continue to trash and malign unions
#4 etc., etc., etc.

[Enthusiast]

3. The GOP convinced their

"followers" that ACORN cheated by registering fictitious voters. This action by ACORN supposedly allowed Obama to win the election. If not for ACORN, McCain/Palin would have won. Honest.

What the motive is for these lies is anyone's guess. They might be doing it to justify or encourage election malfeasance by Republicans at the local and state level. We know they are capable of anything.

[JohnWxy]

4. ACORN's 'problem' is they didn't spend any money promoting themselves. They spent their money on

their stated objecties of helping people who don't have money or power. Very dangerous outfit!!


on the other hand the 'vidiographer' who punked ACORN has been arrested on wiretapping charges:

http://www.thewrap.com/ind-column/anti-acorn-videographer-arrested-phone-tampering-13552