It's fair to criticize the Tea Party, or any group, for what it actually believes. Alas, many apparently bitter leftists still cling to the notion that the Tea Party's true agenda has more to do with racism than it does with the Constitution. Some of those leftists blogged for Daily Kos this past week.
As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym.
BobboSphere: Republicans, marketers of 'white supremacy'
...[T]oday the most powerful organization pushing white supremacy is the Republican Party and its political attack dog, the Tea Party...
...[I]n true Don Draper Mad Men style, Republican operatives once again wrapped their toxic product in positive images that stirred powerful emotions. They decided to throw a Tea Party. They wrapped racial fears in the imagery of the American Revolution. Racism would not only be patriotic, but downright revolutionary. A new tyranny had descended upon America in the form of a black president with a suspicious name and a dangerously multicultural upbringing. Time to ride like Paul Revere before it was too late. That message reached deep into confused and fearful minds way past logic and deep into the most primeval emotions...
swellsman: For the Tea Party, color trumps money
...For all of their claims to be “equally angry at both parties” the Teabaggers never were that. They were never upset because they thought the government had lost its way...they were only upset because the government had been taken over by the Democrats and by a strange-looking swarthy man who seemed to think – just ‘cause he had gotten the most votes – that he didn’t still need to enter the Oval Office by the servants’ door. That was seen as a bit ‘uppity’ (yeah, I said it) and so they were determined to “take their country back”...
...[T]he Teabaggers never have been concerned – not once – that the government might go into debt giving money away to the already rich . . . they are only concerned that the government not give any money to the poor or the middleclass...
Jed Lewison: Why Cain won the Florida straw poll
...Republican activists hate brown people so much they voted for a black guy.
Kos: Conservatives are the new Anti-Sex League
...[Opposing abortion] has nothing to do with babies, and all about controlling human sexuality. If people can have abortions, if they can use condoms, then they will fuck—and that will somehow bring about "social collapse." Forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies to full term is, in their minds, a just punishment for being sluts.
To conservatives, sex is simply bad...
johnva: Conservatism on the couch
...[M]odern conservatism is no longer a coherent policy ideology with a set of associated policy goals. Instead, it is more like a psychological mindset, with an extreme, cult-like focus on purity and achieving dominance over competing systems of thought. As many have said in the past, this is a key hallmark of extreme authoritarian ideologies both historically and today...
...[Conservatives] prefer being wrong and not knowing it to the cognitive dissonance associated with learning new things and engaging in intellectual growth...[T]hey are intellectually lazy and prefer the certainty of conservatism even when it is wrong and laughably simplistic...
Mark Sumner: For the GOP, the political is personal
...They don't shout "drill, baby, drill" because they think it will make gas cheaper. They don't create signs in which cap and trade (a program designed by Republicans of a different era) is bracketed by a hammer and sickle because they think capturing carbon will cost jobs. They do it because they think it will piss you off. They do it even when they know what they're doing is causing real and lasting damage. They do it because hurting liberals is more important than doing the right thing. Hell, as far as today's GOP is concerned, hurting liberals is the definition of doing the right thing. If you like it, they're again' it, even if "it" is breathable air, clean water, or a climate not racing toward irrevocable harm. They've generalized the idea that liberals are pro-livable planet. So Republicans have given screwing the Earth a priority position on their to-do list...
