Best Wishes

Wade

I don’t really know the exact reasons why the crowd cheered Tancredo’s racist remarks. I imagine that there are some people in the crowd who understood the context of these remarks and were totally on board with the idea of disinfranchising people by taking their right to vote away. Some others cheered out of sheer ignorance about the topic. Probably a large portion of the crowd cheered because they think such a test would prohibit President Obama from being reelected. We all must remember that the vast majority of the crowd are people who would never vote for Obama in any sort of pretense, and therefore anything said that could take away Obama’s future power would excite them. So yes, a lot of the cheering was from pure ignorance, some racial intolerance, but more was from anti-Obama resentment.

I think the Republicans need to handle the Tea Party enthusiasts with kid gloves. Republicans and Democrats have their own ideas on fiscal policy, and both parties like spending money to accomplish their goals. I don’t necessarily believe that Republicans are the fiscally responsible party based on the 8 years of the Bush Administration, but I also don’t believe that the Republican base was totally on board with all of the Bush Administration’s fiscal policy. After 8 years under Bush, the true fiscal responsible/budget hawks of the Republican party were discouraged, and that deflated the Republican base. I think the Republican base has recovered, but probably more on the expense of the Obama administration than from their own merits. The Republicans know that they need the Tea Party base to support their candidates, and therefore the Republicans are wary to denounce such remarks made by Tancredo. Politically they would suffer in the near future, a la 2010 elections if they denounced Tancredo.

I’ve heard the same things, MSW, about the groups breaking out in chants of violence against our President. There is no call for that. The Tea Party community prides itself in their civility, but that self-described comment is just inaccurate. I’m not surprised about the racial slurs, either. That’s probably par for the course.

Let me ask you, MSW, for your opinion since Nathan did the “Teabagger Two-Step”. Why did the crowd cheer enthusiastically at the Tea Party convention about Tancredo’s civics literacy tests? Are these people ignorant? Are they racists? Or are they a hybrid of both.

I read your comment and I know as a fact that you don’t condone racism. For a reasonable person to believe otherwise is to discount the quality of comments you have given to this blog.

I think many of the racially charged allegations brought by others can be contributed to cultural differences within an area. I doubt that the average Southern Tea Party enthusiast has the same racial tolerance as someone from the Northeast or the Pacific coast. The same could be said about the average Democrat or Republican in these respective areas. Unfortunately for the Tea Party movement, the news media will pick up the sound bytes from the loudest Tea Party followers.

I drilled down in your link and I was somewhat appalled by some of the pictures I saw. First off, I can’t stand it when I see kids holding up political signs like “protect our borders”. Exploitation of children is very offensive to me, no matter what the political idealogy might be. I also saw some signs trying to indicate that our President is not an American or using his name to somehow link him to Osama bin Laden (Obama bin-lyin).

I talked to a really conservative gentleman in my church yesterday about the Tea Party. He indicated that he went to one of the rallies last April and he was embarrassed to be associated with this group in any faction. A chant broke out with people advocating violence against President Obama. Several racial epithets were uttered, but not as much as the chants condoning violenc. My friend thinks our President is a Socialist, but at the same time he thinks the endless rhetoric of some of the Tea Party enthusiasts is racially motivated and takes away the credibility of the Tea Party movement. My friend also told me he had as much problems with George W. Bush as he currently has with Obama, but the Tea Party protests did not exist because they didn’t want to be associated with the liberal protests.

I think we can chalk up most of these protests as being about frustration over the future of our great nation. Peaceful solutions, solid debate, and more interaction between the Tea Party movement and the Democrat and Republican base is much needed.