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[QUOTE=spence;789530]But couldn't that information be applied to improve the grassroots organization of any goal with any objective?

No. The first Alinsky step is not to improve a grassroots organization, but to "disorganize" existing organizations.

If my mission is to lower taxes, wouldn't the first step be to rub resentments to fan the flames and create a mass army of people? Otherwise why would anyone want to change anything?

No. If your mission is to RAISE taxes you might want to "rub resentments to fan flames and create a mass army of people" that wouldn't get their taxes raised and would benefit from the higher taxes of others. If your mission is to lower taxes, it wouldn't require such nefarious means (but you would be attacked by the Alinskyites who had used those means). Actually, such tactics are necessary when the truth does not suffice. And the truth is not sufficient when your ends are destructive to the current social order (unless that social order is so oppressive that the necessity of its destruction is self evident.)

Isn't this exactly what the Tea Party is doing?

No. They are not combining "hope and resentment" but demanding a truthful adherence to our Constitution as it was intended. They are not trying to "bait an opponent into reacting." They are trying to rally proponents and supporters of the Constitution to vote for those who promise to govern constitutionally. As Scott has said, the Tea Party is trying to maintain what is left of the constitutional order that we have inherited. It is this very constitutional order supported by a free market that the Alyinskyites wish to destroy wilth inflammatory, divisive tactics full of hope and change. Alinsky's rules for radicals is not appropriate nor necessary for what the Tea Party wishes to do. The truth is their means, so there is no need to justify their "means to an end."