Fox News reporter Ed Henry followed quickly in Newt Gingrich’s footsteps by linking President Obama with radical community organizer Saul Alinsky - and then went Gingrich one further by speculating on White House interior decor. The inflammatory question was then picked up and amplified by Fox Nation.

If you recall, gentle reader, Alinsky, the author of “Rules for Radicals,” was right up there with George Soros and Woodrow Wilson in Glenn Beck’s gallery of great Satans, the epitome of that vile progressivism toward which Obama was dragging America kicking and screaming, and the antithesis of everything the Founding Fathers stood for.

“The centerpiece of this campaign, I believe, is American exceptionalism versus the radicalism of Saul Alinsky,” Gingrich said in his South Carolina victory speech on Saturday night.

Two days later, at a press conference, Fox News reporter Ed Henry asked White House spokesman Jay Carney to “clear something up:”

“Newt Gingrich keeps saying on the campaign trail that the president’s vision comes from Saul Alinsky, the community organizer. I haven’t heard you asked about that today, and I am wondering is there some sort of portrait of him in the White House people look up to, or is this some — is this BS basically?”

After taking a swipe at Gingrich’s years as Speaker, (“Have I said how much fun I had as a reporter covering Congress from 1996 to 1998? There was a certain bombast to it at the time”), Carney responded evasively to the question. “Look, the President’s background as a community organizer is well documented in his own books. His experience in that field contributed to who he is today. But his experience is a broad-based one that also included a lot of other areas in his life. So I’ll just leave it at that.” Mind, gentle reader, that could be a polite way of telling Mr. Henry, “none of your business.”

Still, Fox Nation posted that video clip on Fox Nation with the deliberately inflammatory title, Carney Asked if ‘Saul Alinsky Portrait’ is Hanging in the White House. Predictably, readers reacted with anti-Obama hatred – enough hatred that comments are now closed on the thread.

Maybe this will become a standard campaign tactic for Gingrich (and Fox News). And you know what’s ironic, gentle reader? Alinsky’s recommended tactics included: create a mass army of the disaffected; bait your opponents into reacting; and “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Does that remind you of someone? And not President Obama? In fact, as Newshounds has pointed out before, several Tea Party leaders have consciously adopted some of Alinsky’s tactics in building their own movement. Of course, they’ll never say so in campaign speeches. The Founding Fathers might not like it.