Re: Tea Party Racism

On Jul 25, 2010, at 1:06 PM, Doug Pensinger wrote:

> Is the Tea Party fundamentally racist?  Or is it just coincidental  
> that it formed as a black man was taking office?  For years,  
> Republicans were in office busting the budget and passing bills like  
> Medicare D which was completely unfunded and will cost us something  
> like $72 B a year.  Where was the outrage then?
>
> Doug

I wouldn't say it was fundamentally racist as a matter of actual  
policy, or at least not overtly stated policy.  Most of the time, they  
carefully avoid using racist language or imagery in their public  
statements.  Most of the time.

But the party also seems to leave very carefully parsed loopholes in  
their public statements, in general, that one could figuratively drive  
a Mack truck through, in terms of allowing, and one might say even  
enabling, racist ideology and behavior among their rank and file  
membership, and it's an absolute certainty to me that the party has  
some very racist followers, *and* that the party seems to do little if  
anything to discourage those followers from overtly racist behavior.   
And the thing that makes this a really hard question is that if you  
were to ask any of those hardcore racist folks in the Tea Party  
whether the party stands for what they believe in, the majority would  
probably enthusiastically say yes.  And might even specifically extend  
that to support for their racist beliefs and ideology.

It depends on who you ask, and some of the answers you might get from  
the leadership would be rather interestingly uninformative if past  
behavior is any guide.  The best I'd be able to say overall is that  
they are very good at claiming they aren't what they seem in practice  
to be.  Sort of like the Nigerian scam emails that start off with  
"This is not spam" ..

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." -- Thomas Jefferson