Racist Tea Party?

Err.. no.

I firmly believe in the tea party's two guiding principles: lower taxes and a smaller federal government. However - the party has certainly been a catch-all for the disenchanted who fall to the right on the political spectrum (they dont have NPR, the NYT, messenger bags and old volvo wagons to make them feel more loved). This means it is certainly possible that someone, or a number of someones, has shown up at tea party rallies and showed the world that they were a mindless idiot, and said or portrayed racists sentiments.

I really doubt however that the party, in any significant way, is racist, as the NAACP has claimed and asked its leaders to repudiate. Again, it is a loosely organized party based around a set of ideals, and any racism it would seem comes from a small and backwater element. It would be like asking Oxfam to stop violent destruction of property, because while Oxfam had a rally to ask G20 leaders to keep to their previous promises, a bunk of "Black Bloc" hooligans smashed shit. And well, really, that is pretty much a stretch also. Because there has not even been a single substantiated allegation of racism from the tea party.

And then there is also this:

"It is true that the demographics of tea party groups are overwhelmingly white, according to polls. A recent Gallup survey found that 79 percent of tea party supporters are non-Hispanic whites. Only six percent are non-Hispanic blacks.

A Gallup analysis notes, however, that these figures are not wildly different from the representation of these groups in the population as a whole."

First - what an incredibly idiotic piece of writing (thank you CNN), but it shows that the tea-party is not really racially different from the overall population.

Again - I think the tea party has some crazy people in it, which is too bad (well - there are a lot of crazy people in the liberal wing of American politics - they just don't reported on - somehow believing in socialism is humanitarian but believing in capitalism makes you crazy), but hell even Jon Stewart made a lot of fun over the liberal media's portrayal of the tea party as just a bunch of crazy people. The general coverage has been really, really skewed on this one.

So - end result? Conservatives now have an activist wing which is not directly tied into bible-thumping or forming militias. Who would have guessed it? But racism? Can't say I have seen any evidence of that.