July 19th, 2010
The Tea Party Express, one of the national voices of the Tea Party movement, created some political shockwaves when it endorsed Democrat Walt Minnick for re-election earlier this year, the only Democrat the group threw its support behind. Now the group is coming under fire for racial content in a recent fictional letter penned by its spokesman. The man responsible for the letter says it was meant to provoke discussion after the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) condemned elements of the Tea Party movement as racist. Minnick sent a letter Monday condemning the Tea Party Express for its failure to rebuke the man behind the letter and declined the support from the group.
Mark Williams is the spokesman for the group and the man who wrote the letter. He slammed the NAACP for its condemnation of Tea Party followers, and said that NAACP leaders were simply stirring up racial tensions in the country. The fictional letter, which has since been removed from the Tea Party Express’s website, was written to President Abraham Lincoln from what Williams called “Colored People.” Here is some of the content of the letter:
Dear Mr. Lincoln,
We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!
Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn’t that what we want all Coloreds to strive for? What kind of racist would want to end big money welfare? What they need to do is start handing the bail outs directly to us Coloreds.
I 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?
The 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.