Gingrich: ‘Strategic Blunder’ for Palin to Mock Obama as ‘Community Organizer̵

American Spectator Republicans, including Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani, made a "strategic blunder" by making a joke of Barack Obama's work as a community organizer, Newt Gingrich says in a new book about the radical ACORN group.

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It was "not helpful" for Palin and Giuliani to mock community organizing in their speeches at the 2008 Republican National Convention, Gingrich tells investigative reporter Matthew Vadum in his new book, Subversion Inc. The GOP's mockery "trivialized Obama and Obama is not a trivial person," Gingrich said in an exclusive interview with Vadum featured in the book:

In [Gingrich's] opinion it was a strategic blunder for Palin and Giuliani . . . [Gingrich said:] "Obama is the most serious radical threat to traditional America ever to occupy the White House." It would have been better if Republican leaders "had gotten up and said, here is what [Obama] was teaching, and they had taken the audience through the five principles of [radical organizer Saul] Alinsky." Such a discussion "would have sobered the country. It wasn't a funny thing. It was a profound insight into how radical Obama is."

Vadum notes that Gingrich was attacked by ACORN in the 1990s, when some 500 members of the radical group descended on the Washington Hilton chanting "Nuke Newt!" and forced the then-Speaker of the House to cancel a planned speech. A frequent contributor to The American Spectator, Vadum has won praise from Andrew Breitbart, David Horowitz and Michele Bachmann for his new book, the full title of which is Subversion Inc.: How Obama's Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers. Robert Stacy McCain is co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party (Nelson Current). He blogs at The Other McCain.