This is an excellent exchange between the NAACP's Bejamin Jealous and African-American tea party leader David Webb.
I apologize for not having the transcript, but here are the main points:
Jealous makes a good point about the New National Black Panther Party at 2:46. It is an excellent comparison between the NNPPA and the NAACP as opposed to the racist elements in the tea party movement.
But a better point is made before than by Webb at 1:22. He says that Mark Williams (the author of "the Abraham Lincoln Letter") and his group Tea Party Express have been expelled from the National Tea Party Federation specifically because of "the Abraham Lincoln Letter."
But wouldn't that be an admittance of racist elements in the tea party movement?
And I thought Sarah Palin, Michael Steele, AND Fox News said that there were no racist elements in the tea party movement.
So much for truth in politics.
Editor's Note - I apologize to those who feel that I am deviating from lgbt issues to address this situation. But to me, it's all connected.
And here we see the fracturing of the Tea Party. I knew this would come.
ReplyDeleteWilliams and his racist element will form one group, then there will be the sweeter, lighter Tea Party group that tries to have mass appeal.
Problem is the latter needs the racist, wingnut group to be of numerical significance.
The Tea Party Federation isn’t the Tea Party. They are simply just another group in the nationwide Tea Party movement. There are more Tea Party groups not recognized by the Tea Party Federation than there are “official members”.
ReplyDeleteAnother point about the confusion of tea party.
ReplyDeleteI want to take this opportunity to thank the Tea Party for electing Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown since he voted for the Financial Reform Bill and help the President of the United States with another legislative victory, thank you Tea Party. Have you heard of “Unintended Consequences” or “Blowback”? Was he working for the Tea Party, himself or our Country, hmmm only you can answer this one?
ReplyDeleteThe problem is this. Tea Party candidates will win a number of these congressional races because local districts are often safely partisan in nature. They can make their wild, unfounded claims, crazy accusations, etc., and win. That means not only are we likely to see an increase in Republican seats in both houses, we're likely to see more antics, more insanity, more stupidity. At the same time they're going to do everything they can to derail Obama's policies which will likely mean high unemployment, a moribund economy, and more compromises on policy positions that make no one happy.
That could literally mean that if the Republicans put up a legitimate candidate in 2012, they could win. Such a result is bad enough, but the likely response for the Democrats is to move further to the "middle" to placate voters. As we've seen over the last decade, the "middle" in American politics is basically on the verge of being an 80s Republican. Increasingly that means we'll have a political landscape of a conservative party and ratfuck insane parties. The former, given it's track record, slowly moving to the right, the latter, given it's track record, loudly screaming "socialism, communism, fascism!!!"
If we continue on this course, privatization will be socialism.