Tea Partiers lead GOP to ruin

November 6, 1:30 PMPortland Progressive ExaminerMichael Stone

Previous Next

10 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Portland Progressive Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Demonstrators on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009, during a Republican health care reform rally. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

 Tea Parties are leading the GOP to ruin, and the GOP seems powerless to stop their free fall from mainstream to fringe. The latest tea party demonstration was again the scene for expressions of the most vulgar and outrageous insults to the President, Democrats and health care reform.

Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing. Yet the Republicans do their party a severe disservice when they associate with the angry wing nuts of the far right. The great, vast, political middle of America wants nothing to do with extremism on the left or right. By associating the Republican party with right wing extremists, Republicans lose ground with the mainstream, and give the vital political middle to President Obama and the Democrats.

Columnist David Corn describes the scene at the most recent gathering:

The angry folks at the protest -- which attracted several thousand conservatives -- held up signs with messages of hate: "Get the Red Out of the White House," "Waterboard Congress," "Ken-ya Trust Obama?" One called the president a "Traitor to the U.S. Constitution." Another sign showed pictures of dead bodies at the Dachau concentration camp and compared health care reform to the Holocaust. A different placard depicted Obama as Sambo. Yes, Sambo. Another read, "Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds" -- a reference to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory holding that one evil Jewish family has manipulated events around the globe for decades.
All of this extremism was on display -- proudly -- at an event that was officially sponsored by the House Republicans.

President Obama as Sambo? Wow. If the GOP does not distant itself from such blatant right wing nuttery, they will find only desolation and disintegration.

It is legitimate to question the President's policies; it is legitimate to question or even reject Democratric proposals for health care reform. However, depicting President Obama as "Sambo", claiming President Obama is a "traitor", comparing health care reform to Nazi concentration camps, are simply illegitimate critiques that the American people will not endorse or tolerate.

Good Americans want nothing to do with the racism, the antisemitism, the crazed hatred that the Tea Partiers have come to embody. Their destructive, toxic form of political discourse will lead the GOP to ruin.

 Other Articles of Interest:

Tea partiers protest; AMA, AARP support health care reform

R-71 'everything but marriage' passes in Washington State

Bigotry trumps compassion; Maine rejects gay marriage

NY's 23rd district elects Dem; GOP broken and divided