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BY BLAKE HANSON

He’s been a solid talking point for former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s campaign for the GOP nomination, but now the media is starting to question: Just who is Saul Alinsky? Fox News has more...

BRET BAIER: “Why is he relevant now?”
REPORTER: “By the 90s, the young Barack Obama had been schooled and and taught others Alinsky’s techniques, which is why Newt Gingrich has made the name of this largely forgotten figure a daily mantra.”

Alinsky was a community organizer in Chicago -- and many know him from his book “Rules for Radicals.” The Washington Post’s Melinda Henneberger tells Chris Matthews: while Alinsky was a lefty -- many of his techniques were more extreme than President Obama’s.

“He had people come and dump garbage on the property of someone who had not been, an official in Chicago who had not been receptive to garbage pick-up. Is that Barack Obama? No.”

But a writer for the conservative Daily Caller takes odds with Henneberger’s comments, writing...

“ … nearly every political move Obama makes can be traced to ‘Rules for Radicals.’ He’s currently implementing Rule 13 as a central component of his re-election strategy: farcically blaming a Republican Congress for all of his administration’s woes. And therein lies the reason that Barack Obama is such an underwhelming president.”

The Examiner’s Philip Klein takes a completely different approach, saying Gingrich is not a “Reagan Conservative” but a “Alinsky Republican.”

“... if any candidate is using Saul Alinsky's playbook in this campaign, it's Gingrich himself … Gingrich's clashes against the establishment are classic Alinsky.”

So what is Gingrich’s plan in all this? WTSP talks with a political science professor...

“By mentioning Alinsky’s name over and over, Gingrich hopes perhaps to make Alinsky a buzz word. The thorn in Obama’s side during the 2012 campaign that ACORN and Reverend Jeremiah Wright were in previous elections.”