Re: Obama XIII: It's all Bush's fault.
The thing that made the Hitler posters a semi-official GOP position is Beck, since Fox : the RNC :: Pravda : the Politburo.
But I doubt the Hitler posters phase anybody in the Tea Party movement, in the way that similarly absurd stuff doesn't phase people in, say, the anti-globalization movement. The freaks believe it, the organizers allow it because there's no such thing as bad publicity, and most of the people at the rally think "well, that's stupid" and then go on to protest or eat free food or pick up girls or whatever they came for.
That seems about right. Plus, comparing your opponants to Hitler is as American as apple pie. It happened tens of thousands of times during the previous administration and I don't recall too many D panties in a wad because of it. Why Charles Foster Kane was burned in effigy and all he did was have a girlfriend.
Although I don't identify with the TPers, there seems to be a good case to be made that early on the Journolist types decided what the narrative about the movement was going to be and, surprise, surprise, "racism" topped the list.
Four months later and we don't have any independent corroboration of the N-word being tossed at John Lewis, despite numerous people being there to record the stunt (I seem to recall riding on the subway system we've installed at great expense to get members of congress to and from the capitol and their offices). One would assume that if proof existed, we would have seen it by now.
However, there is video of SEIU types prowling around the perimeter of TP events saying things like "I'm proud to be a racist," and other provacative (and awfully obvious) things. And one lefty outfit put out a videotape of alleged TP misdemeanors that was heavily edited and included one event from two or three years ago.
So where does that leave us? Certainly there must be some TPers who hold views on race that most of the rest of us reject. That same statistical argumet also holds true for the AFL/CIO, the Sweet Adelines and the American Legion. But should we condemn the entire movement because of it? I'm old enough to remember when people were called before the HCUA, the left constantly babbled about "guit by association," and how we should reject it. Now, not so much. Did somebody, anybody call the hero of the civil rights movement the N-word? It's certainly possible, but is it probable? I'm not convinced. And it seems to me incindiary charges like this need to be independently corroborated, and they haven't been. Because it's possible that if someone did shout the N-word, he did so to discredit the TPers, not support them.
And the journolist revelations also indicate some well placed liberals are prepared to make up charges of racism against prominent conservatives to advance their cause and change the subject. And would therefore be prepared to advance the "racism" argment against TPers, again, absent any evidence. You know, the ends justifying the means.
As someone wrote the other day: we've largely gotten past racism in this country. But we're still dealing with race-baiting.
