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Stanley Kurtz Radical In Chief interviewed on January 5, 2011 This is an unedited transcript of the interview

Peter Robinson: Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I am Peter Robinson. Be sure to join us on Facebook at facebook.com/UncKnowledge; facebook.com/UncKnowledge. An author, journalist and anthropologist, Stanley Kurtz is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a Contributing Editor to National Review Online. Stanleys latest book; Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism. Stanley welcome. Segment one: Stanley Kurtz was wrong. I am quoting you Stanley from Radical-in-Chief, when I began my research for this book, my inclination was to downplay or dismiss evidence of explicit socialism in Obamas background. I thought the socialism issue was an unprovable and unnecessary distraction from the broader question of Obamas ultra liberal inclinations. I was wrong. Why were you wrong? Stanley Kurtz: Well, Peter, it's true during the campaign I wasn't exactly shy in 2008 about calling Obama a radical about saying he was much, much further to the Left than he advertised himself. But even I did not think at that time that he was literally a socialist. But when I looked into his past, I saw unmistakable socialist experiences, phase of his life when he literally was a classic Marxist-Leninist. Peter Robinson: "When I look into his past" when did you do that after he was elected?

Stanley Kurtz: Well during Campaign 2008 I began my research on Obamas past and I research helped to inject the issues of Bill Ayers and ACORN into the campaign. But it was after the 2008 election that I really began going all around the country looking into archives of community organizations and radical groups that Obama had had involvement with throughout his life and my jaw dropped at certain points when I saw material from socialist scholars conferences for example where it was clear that Obama had attended that linked to his entire political career. Peter Robinson: But Stanley, what was there left for you to discover? The man had run for President of the United States. Thousands of journalists had been watching him for two or three years, of course doing faithfully all the work, uncovering every stone and turning over every leaf to learn all they possibly could about this mans background, correct? Stanley Kurtz: Right. There was really no serious effort to vet Obama during the 2008 Presidential campaign. And such material as did come out was really ignored, I think very consciously and systematically by the mainstream press. A lot of people said that Hilary Clinton must have found everything there was to find in her oppositional research. Of course, none of that was true and even I who had done research in 2008 was tremendously surprised by the paper trail that you could uncover on Obama. Peter Robinson: But it took time and it took somebody willing to do the work of turning up at archives, asking questions, doing research. All right, you discovered a socialist connection. Define socialism; here's what's on my mind. Reading the Wall Street Journal this morning over my cup of coffee I came across a phrase, they were talking about what John Boehner, the new Speaker needs to understand, and he needs to understand that Obama is I made this a mental note a determined man of the Left. Why wont that do? Why do we need to know that he is a socialist?

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Stanley Kurtz Radical In Chief interviewed on January 5, 2011 This is an unedited transcript of the interview

Stanley Kurtz: Well chiefly because the community organizers who were the mentors and sponsors of Obama actively thought of themselves as socialists. It is just that they had a notion that you should keep the secret, that you should not speak to the people you organize about your socialism, but you should use it only for your own strategic purposes. And getting back to your larger question of definition, the classic definition of socialism of course is that you get complete national control of the means of production. The whole economy is run by the government. What people do not understand is that socialism began to change in the United States after the 1960s. The New Leftist, the people from the SDS, they became frustrated after 10 or 15 years when they realized we're not going to have a socialist revolution in the United States. Then of course when Ronald Reagan became President it became clear that you were not going to have a nationalization strategy. So at that point, socialism changed and the thought was to get a kind a de facto public control over the economy from below, not through nationalization from above but through community organizing from below. So for example, people are familiar with the way ACORN Peter Robinson: Stanley Kurtz: Peter Robinson: ACORN, give us a moment, the acronym stands for? The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. All right.

Stanley Kurtz: And ACORN, one of the most powerful and prominent community organizations in the country effectively got control of the banking sector and actually was able to carve out a whole territory within the banking sector for sub-prime mortgages. People who would previously never have gotten loans because they had risky credits histories could get loans now and those loans were handled through ACORN and similar organizations. Now the socialists of the 1980s saw that as a model for socializing the economy from below. So this was the new strategy of socialism that came out after the 1960s and I argue in the book is the strategy that entranced Obama. Peter Robinson: All right. Segment two: Obama the Student and Young Man. Again Stanley let me quote you from your own book from Radical-in-Chief you provided a kind of one paragraph summary of Obama as a socialist. From his teenage years under the mentorship of Frank Marshall Davis to his socialist days at Occidental College to this life transforming encounters at New York socialist scholars conferences to his emerging in the stealthilly socialist community organizer network of Chicago Barack Obama has lived in a thoroughly socialist world. So take us through that, alas it's a webcast, we kind of have to live up to the demands of the metabolism of television. But the teenage years and Frank Marshall Davis, who was that man? Stanley Kurtz: Well Frank Marshall Davis was an African-American, a very accomplished journalist and poet who was a kind of mentor to Obama in his high school years. Frank Marshall Davis had at one time been a member of the Communist Party. Now he left the Communist Party but he really retained his radicalism and his socialism and in his own memoir, Obama speaks of trying to follow Frank Marshall Davis advice not to lose his cutting edge political sensibility when he went to college and became an adult, not to sell out, not to buy into the system. And we find that when Obama was in Occidental College, and this is information that has come out since 2008, but was not available during the campaign. When Obama was at Occidental, pardon me. Page 2 of 12

Stanley Kurtz Radical In Chief interviewed on January 5, 2011 This is an unedited transcript of the interview

Peter Robinson: I'll vamp for a moment, Occidental prestigious liberal arts institution in Southern California, not known as a hot bed of socialism I do not think. Jack Kemp is a graduate of Occidental. Stanley Kurtz: That is true, Kemp is from Occidental, but there are a number of Marxist professors in the words of Obama himself at Occidental. Peter Robinson: All right.

Stanley Kurtz: When Obama was at Occidental it is pretty clear now we have this from both pro-Obama and critical of Obama sources, he really was a socialist in the classic sense. He was a Marxist-Leninist who looked forward to revolution. But after that Peter Robinson: Stanley Kurtz: But Stanley, he is 18 and 19 years old. Absolutely.

Peter Robinson: So all right go ahead. I am just, I mean I am thinking now I have a kid at college, I do not know quite what her political beliefs are but I do not take them seriously one way or the other. On the other hand, she is not President. Stanley Kurtz: Right, but that is why you put your finger on the issue before. When you talked about this continuous thread. Peter Robinson: Ah, all right.

Stanley Kurtz: That's what the book really argues. Of course a lot of people go through radical phases in colleges, they go through all sorts of crazy things in college and they leave it behind. But that's not what happened to Obama. And that is what the book does really is to trace this continuous path. So for example and Obama transferred to Columbia University. He was in New York City and the book really begins with a series of socialist scholars conferences that Barack Obama attended when he lived in New York between the years of 1983 and 1985. And I argue in the book that it was at these conferences that Barack Obama first learned about community organizing and the crucial role the community organizing played in the socialist strategy. This again is where socialism changed. The idea was to grab hold of the economy from below through these community organizations. And this was the idea presented at the various socialist scholars conferences Obama attended. And then what did Obama do? He moved to Chicago. And who did he work with? Peter Robinson: Stanley Kurtz: Hang on. You're skipping over Harvard, Harvard Law School. Ah.

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Stanley Kurtz Radical In Chief interviewed on January 5, 2011 This is an unedited transcript of the interview

Peter Robinson: Harvard when there is some nefarious development in a persons life Harvard often plays a role. Give us a Stanley Kurtz: Well actually Obama went to Chicago both before and after Harvard Law School and it's true at Harvard that he interacted with various Left-leaning professors and what not, but really the book concentrates on the community organizers that Obama worked with both before he was at Harvard Law School and after Harvard Law School. They really were the community organizers who were the model of what those socialist scholars conferences had focused on. Peter Robinson: Let me ask you another question, Stanley. He was in New York at Columbia from 1983 to 1985. The backdrop in those years is Ronald Reagan is President, he cuts taxes, he rolls back regulations beginning in the summer of 1983 the economy recovers. In 1984, he is reelected 49 states out of 50. By 1985 inflation is down to low single digits, the economy is roaring, the Soviet Union is on the defensive and Barack Obama is moving to the Left. Do you get any senses that he is engaged at all with the larger political context, with the evidence all around him that freedom, capitalism works? Stanley Kurtz: Well Barack Obama during the Reagan years saw himself at the cutting edge of resisting Ronald Reagan. I think he would have answered your case for Ronald Reagan by saying that Reagan was pulling the wool over the eyes of the American people and blinding them to the poverty that still existed in the country. That is what Obama was focused on. For example, these stealthilly socialist community organizers he worked with, they sponsored the political career of a Congressman in Illinois named Lane Evans. Lane Evans represented a district which had traditionally been Republican and yet through very clever organizing work, he was able to be elected in conjunction with these community organizers. He had the most anti-Reagan voting record of anyone in the House or at least close to that during the Reagan years. And on Obamas election night, when he was watching television on election 200,8 Lane Evans was sitting next to him, a symbol for him of resistance to Reagan at the very height of the Reagan Administration. Peter Robinson: All right. Segment three: Obama: Activist and Politician. We got him through his boyhood, now he is back in Chicago. Stanley you used the phrase, you told us about ACORN, you used the phrase community organizer. What is a community organizer? I paraphrase Sarah Palin at the Republican Convention, what do community organizers do? Stanley Kurtz: Well community organizers take discontent that exists wherever and try to turn that discontent in the direction of their true long-term political goals. And since I argue in the book that the leadership of community organizing in the United States is largely socialist, the real answer to this question is community organizers take discontent and try to use it as a lever to move the public gradually toward socialism. Peter Robinson: Bill Ayers. Tell us who he is and what his role was in the development of Barack Obama as a mature politician.

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Stanley Kurtz Radical In Chief interviewed on January 5, 2011 This is an unedited transcript of the interview

Stanley Kurtz: Well, Bill Ayers represented the kind of New Leftist who was in many ways the opposite of the people who became Obamas core mentors. Obamas core mentors were the members of the SDS in their day. Peter Robinson: Students for a Democratic Society.

Stanley Kurtz: Yes. And they were the people who said let us not have a violent revolution now because it is just not going to work. Let's turn to community organizing. Let's work incrementally, let's work quietly, stealthily and slowly. But first of course delayers and his wife Bernadine Doran leaders of the weather underground faction were the total opposite of all that. They believed in setting off a revolution right away by blowing up bombs. They thought the American public would rally to them. It was only later that Bill Ayers and Bernadine Doran realized that they had made a mistake, that they had failed and they took up something much closer to what their SDS colleagues who were more cautious had advocated. And so at that point, when he was a mature individual living in Chicago, Bill Ayers was really part of this stealthily socialist world of community organizing. And he brought Obama on to the leadership of an education foundation that he Bill Ayers had created. And I show in the book that Obama actually brought Bill Ayers on to the Woods Fund to help him. And what they both were doing in all of their foundation ventures was giving financial support to this stealthy network of socialist community organizers. Peter Robinson: And earlier you gave us the example of ACORN which organizes at the grassroots level, makes common cause with, I'm adding this to your description but I think I understand it to be your argument; they make common cause with the Barney Franks of the world. There are a few Leftists members of, politicians in high positions who then use the levers of government effectively to command large swathes of the private economy. That is the ACORN example. What's going on in Chicago? What socialist achievements does this stealthy network or community organizers have to its credit? Stanley Kurtz: Well Bill Ayers in Chicago was a key figure in the school reform movement which was envisioned by Ayers and his group as a kind of practice for getting community control of government. And they saw that as groundwork for a long-term move in the socialist direction. And this was actually fought by the teachers unions. The teachers unions were to the right of the school reform faction which wanted to have local elections essentially so that these community organizations could get control of the school system and ultimately as much of the government as they could. And in a broader sense, the achievement of socialist community organizers in Chicago was to ally, as you were speaking earlier about Barney Frank, to ally with Mayor Harold Washington when Mayor Harold Washington was alive. The interesting thing about this was that Mayor Harold Washington actively and openly worked with Chicago socialists. He allied with these community organizations and they helped bring him to victory. And one of the things that I say in the book is that when Obama was first drawn to these socialist scholars conferences all the talk in the socialist world was about how community organizing could be linked to politics on the model of Harold Washington. And of course, Harold Washington was Obamas idol. His vision of what he might someday be and the thought of American socialists in the mid-1980s was that Harold Washington in his alliance with socialist community organizers was a kind of example of how Page 5 of 12

Stanley Kurtz Radical In Chief interviewed on January 5, 2011 This is an unedited transcript of the interview

African-American-led rainbow coalitions would bring socialism into the mainstream of American politics. Peter Robinson: Here is what strikes me again Stanley. I mentioned this earlier about Obama sees Reagans agenda working or should see it working, he can say to himself that Reagan is pulling the wool over peoples eyes, but that is Obama pulling the wool over his own eyes because we know that for example two of the groups that made the most dramatic advances during the Reagan recovery were African-Americans and women. So, then you get Harold Washington and whatever dreams there are of remaking Chicago don't work. Harold Washingtons tenure as Mayor is widely viewed as a failure and when Richard Dailey the current and soon to be former mayor finally agrees to run for mayor, there is a huge sigh of relief throughout the Chicago body of politics. Finally a grown up again. So we have Barack Obama making common cause with a group of people who just are ineffective. Stanley Kurtz: Well, I buy what you are saying, but let me try to answer from what I think would have been Obama's Peter Robinson: Stanley Kurtz: famous Peter Robinson: What's he thinking? That's the question. Right. I think actually we could go back to Jeremiah Wright here with his

Jeremiah Wright is?

Stanley Kurtz: Well Jeremiah Wright of course being the controversial minister that brought Obama into Christianity. And Jeremiah Wright is famous and some would say notorious for saying fight middle classness, oppose middle classness. So whereas Ronald Reagan would have seen increasing numbers of Blacks moving into the middle class and maybe moving out into the suburbs as a triumph. Peter Robinson: Yes. Like to get into the middle class.

Stanley Kurtz: Exactly. But Reverend Wright and Barack Obama saw that as abandoning the poor people who remained in the city. Fight middle classness. That meant don't go the traditional American Horatio Alger route. Instead, get government programs that will get these people out of poverty. They didn't really see moving into the middle class as the wonderful antidote to poverty that it is. They saw it as a betrayal of the lower class. Peter Robinson: Segment four: the Disguise. Let me quote you once again from Radical-inChief. At every turn I am quoting At every turn Obama has disguised his socialist past. Explain that. Stanley Kurtz: Well, in the book I come across incident after incident where Obama has not told the truth to the American people about his political past and he does this in different ways. Sometimes he lets a little bit slip out. So for example, he says when I was at Occidental College, I Page 6 of 12

Stanley Kurtz Radical In Chief interviewed on January 5, 2011 This is an unedited transcript of the interview

hung out with the Marxist professors. Well we now know that he was not just hanging out with the Marxist professors, when he was at Occidental, he fully agreed with the Marxist professors. He was a very strong Marxist-Leninist at that time. He moderated later only in the sense that he came to this new stream of socialism. But at any rate that gives you, the sense Obama has a kind of nondisclosure disclosure pattern. But it goes beyond that. One of the things I do in the book is to look into Obamas relationship with ACORN. I went to the previously unexplored archives of ACORN at the Wisconsin Historical Society and found that Obama had an extensive relationship with that organization over a period of many years. Peter Robinson: You quote Barack Obama in Radical-in-Chief during his third debate with John McCain, quoting Barack Obama the only involvement Ive had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the US Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law. The only involvement he had with ACORN. Just not true? Stanley Kurtz: That is where I used the L word, the lie word. I usually do not like to use the word lie; I say well, it was not fully frank with the American people or what not. But I really think we have so much documentation now that we can fairly say that Obama consciously and knowingly lied to the American public about his relationship with ACORN during the 2008 election campaign. So really Obamas tactics have disguised and range from these non-disclosures discourse to flat out lies and almost everything on the spectrum in between. Peter Robinson: Why is he disguising this? Barney Frank lets you know where he stands, got elected over and over and over again from Massachusetts. Jeremiah Wright, Lord knows he would let you know where he stands. Bill Ayers lets you know where he stands. So what is the disguise here? Stanley Kurtz: Peter Robinson: Well I don't think Why is he going undercover?

Stanley Kurtz: I really do not think you could elected as President of the United States if you acknowledged frankly how far left you really were. You may do it in Barney Franks district. Bernie Sanders can say very frankly that he is a socialist and get elected as senator from Vermont. But it is just not going to fly with the American public to be President of the United States. And that's my real problem here. I'm not calling for boycotts of supporters of Bernie Sanders banning them from work like in the blacklist days. I think this is really an issue of political honesty which is required if democracy is going to work. Peter Robinson: It starts early. I don't mean to be tendentious I am just trying to draw you out here, I am genuinely curious about this. Obama serves in the Illinois state legislature and then he is a senator from Illinois. Surely the legislature, the state legislature has small enough districts you could get elected from Hyde Park or this you can choose and you can say I am a man of the Left and they would elect you. Right? You can do a Bernie Sanders, but he did not, even then.

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Stanley Kurtz Radical In Chief interviewed on January 5, 2011 This is an unedited transcript of the interview

Stanley Kurtz: Well I think he was a little bit more frank about his leftism when he was from Hyde Park but from the moment that Obama was at Harvard and was selected as the first AfricanAmerican editor of Harvard Law Review he knew that he had the potential to have a major national career. And I think from that moment he was very cautious and very careful. Peter Robinson: All right. So from the age of what he's 24 when he shows up at Harvard. We have herethis seems improbable, but I think you argue that it is just factually the case. We have to conclude that it is the case. At the age of 24, he is a convinced man of the Left and convinced of his own talents and future. At the age of 24 he thinks he will become a national figure, true? Stanley Kurtz: His immediate goal was to become mayor of the city of Chicago. That was his dream. And Harold Washington was his idol. But once he was elected as editor of the Harvard Law Review and realized he could go even higher than that. I mean if you were just a law student and all of a sudden you were in the New York Times and people were paying you a lot of money for your life story, you would be pretty optimistic about your political future too. Peter Robinson: Once again from Radical-in-Chief Stanley, I'm quoting you if the full extent of Obamas radicalism has been kept under wraps by Obama himself, it should nonetheless have been obvious in 2008 that Obama was far from the post-racial, post-ideological, post-partisan politician presented to the country by the mainstream press and the Obama campaign alike. Two questions. Why did the mainstream press so willingly cooperate, collaborate one almost might say, in putting across what ought to have been clear to them was a fabrication? Stanley Kurtz: Well of course there was a genuinely inspiring story in 2008 of America coming close to and then finally electing the first African-American as President. It was a deeply inspiriting story and I think we can all get some inspiration from it. Peter Robinson: Stanley Kurtz: thinking. Peter Robinson: So you cut everybody involved a lot of slack? I don't actually cut them slack but I am just trying to explain what they were

All right.

Stanley Kurtz: And I think that is a large part of what they were thinking and I think at least some members of the media were a little bit more savvy then that and they knew that this fellow was far to the Left and that was exactly what they wanted and they did not want to give the game away. Peter Robinson: Andrew Ferguson of The Weekly Standard there is indeed a name for the beliefs that motivate President Obama but it is not socialism, its liberalism. This is a refrain in review after review, even quite friendly reviews of the book, "look, Stanley has all kinds of factually compelling material here. But who cares?" Why go into this strange John Bircher, slightly crazy, McCarthy all kinds of accusations get attached to you if you're saying socialist. Page 8 of 12

Stanley Kurtz Radical In Chief interviewed on January 5, 2011 This is an unedited transcript of the interview

Stanley Kurtz:

Right.

Peter Robinson: So why do you do it? I return to this. How would you distinguish between and if Andy were here, how would you explain to him that he is mistaken, that it's not just liberalism? Stanley Kurtz: Well there is an overlap between the program of modernized socialism and contemporary liberalism. Part of what socialists did was to work within the Democratic Party quite self-consciously. But seizing on those elements of the standard liberal program that were most likely to put the country on an irreversible structural path towards socialism. Now look at what President Obama did with the healthcare bill. It is just coming out now that most of his advisers told him not to focus on healthcare. They said that this is politically very damaging. Obama actually moved in that direction against the advice of almost every senior political adviser he had. That to me is a sign that we are dealing with something a little different that the standard liberal agenda. And there are, and I talk about this in the book, other little things like proxy access. No one pays attention to this but Obama's mentors believed in something they called corporate democracy. This again was the idea of grabbing hold of the economy from below and getting a kind of de facto public ownership. Things like that have been salted into the financial reform bill and no one pays any attention to it and it is really understanding the socialist background that reveals that. But I also have to say if people only decide that Obama is way far to the Left of where he has presented himself I would be happy with that. Peter Robinson: Stanley Kurtz: You will have done a good day's work. Yeah you do not have to buy the whole deal.

Peter Robinson: Segment five this brings us to what we have been inching up toward Why It Matters. Radical-in-Chief It could be argued, it could be argued that Obamas past no longer matters after all. Now we can judge Obama by what his administration does rather than by whatever he did or did not believe in the past. I (Stanley Kurtz), I argue that the truth is the opposite. When it comes to Obama the past in a sense matters more than the present. That is an outlandish assertion, Stanley. Defend it. Stanley Kurtz: Well, here's where we can come back to the Ronald Reagan comparison that's come up a few times. I mean Reagan leveled with the American public. He made no bones about it. He was conservative. He explained that. He helped to bring the public along to convince them. And he was opposed, it was for honest reasons. Obama hasn't done that. Obama has not advocated any ideology openly. He has cast many of his most ambitious plans as just pragmatic fixes to the economy. I don't think that's true. And if you don't understand that there is an ideology laying behind this, you're not going to be able to really evaluate these reforms Obama is laying out. For example regulation and we are coming up to that now with a Republican Congress. Obama is going to be achieving so much of his real program through executive regulation. Now the mind of the President means everything. Whether you're just going to regulate in such a way as to fulfill the wishes of Congress and create a pragmatic system fix. Or whether you 're going to use the laws to Page 9 of 12

Stanley Kurtz Radical In Chief interviewed on January 5, 2011 This is an unedited transcript of the interview

try to provoke a much more radical systemic change by abusing your regulatory process, that has everything to do with what your true inner intentions are. Peter Robinson: So what you're arguing is something like hes fixed the game. In democracy, the model of democracy is competing views. But that the public is allowed to choose between openly, fairly competing views. If you have people who seem to be competing in one way but aren't really, it is like violation of all that we hold sacred in the game of baseball. The pitcher isn't allowed to throw the game. That is a very serious offense. You get kicked out of the game. You get yanked from the Hall of Fame if you do something like that. That's what's going on. All right. So that is an extremely serious charge you are making that he is in effect subverting the democratic process by holding back on his true convictions and most abiding motivation. And that is the charge you wish to make? Stanley Kurtz: That is the charge I am making and frankly it has already been made. I mean you go back to healthcare reform and people said that Obamas real long-term plan was to move to a single payer system. And you may remember there were controversial videotapes that came out where he said exactly that. Obama then said "well I'm not really feeling that way anymore, don't play those tapes, they're really totally irrelevant." The public did not buy it. That helped to launch the Tea Party movement. What I am saying in the book is that whole thing is going on everywhere. It is much more extensive than you realize. It isn't just those little clips of video tape. In effect by going into the archives I am pulling out tape after tape of what his real long-term intentions are. Peter Robinson: All right. Now as we sit here chatting this morning, John Boehner is becoming the new Speaker of the House, 63 new Republicans are being sworn in. Today is the firstthey are reading the Constitution in the House chamber as we speak. Rush Limbaugh referred to it on the air this morning as an exorcism. So, here's the new argument that I put to you, Stanley. He may have, Barack Obama may have concealed his true intentions in the 2008 campaign, but over the last two years, they got revealed. The American people are on to him and in the last election they said "stop it, no way, we oppose this." Sixty-three new seats in the House for Republicans and majority of 59, not quite a majority in the Senate but picked up seats in the Senate; some 600 new seats in the state legislature. So, although Radical-in-Chief is of fascinating historical importance, what does it matter to the contemporary context? Stanley Kurtz: Well, there are still a lot of people out there, Peter, who buy the pragmatist argument. You would be amazed. I know some of them. Not everyone I know is conservative and people who are absolutely entranced with Obama as he presented himself in the 2008 campaign and have never lost the faith. And in fact, in some polls his popularity is coming up and it's by no means impossible that Obama could win reelection. And at that point I think we would be right back in the soup as far as what his real long-term intentions are when he didn't have to worry about reelection anymore, he'd go to town. And so I think this is a very serious business. And one of the things I argue in the book is that conservatives must not get overconfident that Obama has a surprisingly plausible strategy for making these long-term transformations. I lay that out in some detail. That, for example, is why he arranged for this tax compromise to come up again for reconsideration, not in one year or three years, but in two years. He wants to have a class-based battle over the Bush tax Page 10 of 12

Stanley Kurtz Radical In Chief interviewed on January 5, 2011 This is an unedited transcript of the interview

cuts. You can't do it now, in light of the election that we just had, but he wants to have it in 2012. So this is a very serious business and conservatives shouldn't take victory for granted. Peter Robinson: So, in his thinking, you talked about socialism in this country changing in the '60s and then again in the '80s to an effort to capture the economy from below. He is not below anything right now; he is the top man in the country. So the question is, in his understanding of the socialist trajectory, is he committed throughout his time in office whether he has two more years or six more years, to deceit and sleight of hand and giving the American people something he believes they ought to have but that they don't want? Or is it his understanding and those of the Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wrights of the world, that by about now, the American people will be coming around? That by the time they reelect him he can be a pretty forthright man of the Left, it won't matter that his true intentions, that Radical-in-Chief has been published, because by then the American people will have bought on to socialism. At some point they must believe that they are actually going to conquer the hearts of the people. Stanley Kurtz: I think it is a little bit of both is the answer. There is a strategy for creating class-based conflict and that is why we saw President Obama do these things that surprise many people. Like attacking the Chamber of Commerce and telling Hispanics to punish their enemies. There is a desire to jump-start a populous anti-business movement of the Left. Now it would not be openly socialist, the idea, the long-term plan of Obamas community organizing mentors is that you jump-start a populous movement. You don't call it socialist, you just steer it from behind using socialist strategy. But there are all sorts of efforts to jump-start that populous movement of the Left. And even at the cost of alienating some people in the center. So I think there's a desire to hold as many people in the center as you can, but eventually to try to divide the country along class lines and the thought of Obamas mentors was that over time as a gradual process if class becomes the central divide in American politics, there will be movement towards socialism eventually. Peter Robinson: Last couple of questions Stanley, alas, we are out of time. Radical-in-Chief, your first piece of advice of course is read the book. But two groups of people one is Republicans now considering running against Barack Obama in 2012 and the second is ordinary American voters. What one or two sentences of advice would you give to each? Prospective Republican candidates against Barack Obama. What would you say? Call him a socialist? Stanley Kurtz: Well ,you know, I think you just put on the table a lot of evidence about the President's past. I think that is completely legitimate and say there is some serious questions here. Questions that frankly the press ought to go to Obama and see what he has to say. I dont know that I would entirely trust his responses, but it is legitimate I think to bring up a whole series of issues about his long term intentions in light of the fact that he presents himself still to this day as a postpartisan pragmatist. To the Republicans I would say the way to combat a stealth strategy is to explode the stealth. Peter Robinson: Okay, so the strategy that Republicans in the House have announced over the next couple of years: bill after bill after bill, send them to his desk, force him to veto them. That is the correct strategy. Page 11 of 12

Stanley Kurtz Radical In Chief interviewed on January 5, 2011 This is an unedited transcript of the interview

Stanley Kurtz: And I think it is actually his strategy, because as we were saying just a bit ago, he wants there to be a kind of a clash ultimately over class-oriented issues. He thinks he is going toRepublicans think they are going win when the Bush tax cut extension comes up again and Obama thinks he is going to win. Just as we said in an earlier segment, the Reagan people saw the movement of Blacks into the suburbs as a triumph and Obama saw it as a failure. We have really different world views here even about what's politically going to work. Peter Robinson: Stanley, Stanley Kurtz, I need to repeat your name. Stanley Kurtz author of Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, thanks for joining us. Stanley Kurtz: Peter Robinson: Thanks for having me, Peter. I'm Peter Robinson for Uncommon Knowledge, thank you.

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