Mark Steyn on ACORN: Community Organizing in Action

by Publius

Last night, Mark Steyn discussed Obama’s connection to ACORN and ACORN’s role in the 2010 Census on the “The Hugh Hewitt Show”:

steyn

Hugh Hewitt: I think you’re right. It will come down to whether or not there are enough Democrats who will lemming-like go over the cliff for the benefit of President Obama’s vision for America. And that remains to be seen. Let me ask you about the ACORN story. Have you been following the story at www.biggovernment.com that Andrew Breitbart has loosed about…

Mark Steyn: Yeah.

HH: What do you make of this?

MS: Well, this is a story in which he’s got some amazing footage of ACORN officials telling a pimp and a prostitute how to lie to the IRS, and how to claim mythical, underage dependents in exotic lands as dependents for taxation purposes and various other things. It’s fascinating stuff, because it’s a glimpse of what community organization is in action. Community organization means bigging up your base. And if necessary, that means conscripting all kinds of peculiar figures, including pimps, prostitutes and their various fictional or real dependents in foreign lands, and claiming benefits for them. And it’s absolutely outrageous that actually more of this wasn’t exposed in the campaign, because Obama’s connection to ACORN, and his willingness to give ACORN a role in the United States Census, puts a huge question mark over the reliability of government data, and over U.S. elections, not so much in blue and red states, but in purple states, it puts a big question mark over the integrity of those elections.

HH: It was the second ACORN story this week. There was one in Florida about false registrations where indictments have come down, raising the specter perhaps of pattern and practice investigation by that U.S. attorney. But by itself, right now, we’ve got one corrupt ACORN official advising two young, undercover investigative journalists on how to import child prostitutes, and claim them on their tax form.

MS: Right.

HH: As it is, I don’t know that it moves farther. But if there are other shoes that dropped, does this become a major scandal?

MS: Yes, I think so, because what is odd to me, if you look for example at the way Republicans are always being called on to distance themselves from their so-called lunatic fringe, the pattern here is that on the other side of the aisle, there is a lunatic mainstream. ACORN should not be a respectable group, and should not be anywhere near the United States Census. But as we saw with the Van Jones story, no matter how radical you are, on the left, it’s very easy for the most extreme radical to get right up close to the levers of power in the United States. That is where, unfortunately, that is where Obama’s lived most of his adult life, and that is where most of his associations are.

Read the full transcript of the interview here.


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Posted Sep 11th 2009 at 1:24 pm in ACORN, News, Obama, Politics | 275 Comments