aTimothy Egan of the New York Times describes the rhetoric of a tea party pundit:
Who is Williams? A garden variety demagogue who calls Obama “an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug” and the Democratic party “a domestic enemy” of America. He also refers to the president as “racist in chief.” That says all you need to know about leaders of the Tea Party movement.
Williams repeatedly invoked the “working stiffs” who feel left out. Working people are always the last to get aboard the gravy train, and the first to be used in campaigns that will not advance their cause. And with these demonstrators, and the hucksters trying to distract them from real issues, history repeats itself. (Emphasis mine)
Over at The American Prospect, Michelle Goldberg recounts the evangelical movement’s shameful history on Civil Rights and its now-erased 1990s bid for redemption.
Producerism has often been a trope of right-wing movements, especially during times of economic distress, when many people sense they’re getting screwed. Its racist (and often anti-Semitic) potential is obvious, so it gels well with the climate of Dixiecrat racial angst occasioned by the election of our first black president. The result is the return of the repressed.
[...]As racism grew politically unacceptable, the Christian right was able to channel resentment over the decline of white male privilege into a Kulterkampf directed at more acceptable enemies, like gays and lesbians. The movement borrowed heavily from Catholic theology and convinced itself that it was in a righteous struggle against a culture of death, not a culture of diversity. Now the mask is off.
Egan and Goldberg have recognized a time-honored right-wing rhetorical strategy of divide-and-conquer. A strange, toxic mix of Randian individualism and pious Culture War has allowed Cessna conservatives to exploit the ignorance and prejudices of working-class Americans to turn them against their own interests. It’s the basis of the Southern Strategy created by Nixon and perfected by Reagan.
The Southern Strategy has begun to crumble, yet Republicans hold out hope that Teh Stupid™ will have its usual power. After all, how many teabaggers were quoted on deficits and debt last Saturday, for example? Yet the facts have that well-known liberal bias once again:
If they are ever to truly take power back from the right, American progressives must do a better job of public education on issues like this.
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