Andrew Breitbart on racial politics and the Tea Party movement:
Linking the health-care bill, which has nothing to do with black and white, to the divisive civil-rights period, while simultaneously accusing its opponents of being racist, is an evil strategy — literally. Charles Manson would approve.
The Democratic Party is trying to signal to the black community and to progressive media types that the way to push back against the Tea Party and Republicans is to use the reliable race card by provoking a racial incident. The ensuing rhetoric about the bill and about the nature of the Tea Party is based upon repeated talking points. Propaganda. Everyone is on message that Republicans and Tea Partiers are racist — a divisive and dangerous argument, so lacking in any shred of evidence save for the fact that the majority in the Tea Party, as in America itself, is white. This is Duke lacrosse politics at its worst.
[…]
The first Alinsky president is now using surrogates to split this nation into two hostile parties so he can puppeteer the have-nots against the perceived haves. […]
The other part of the strategy that is built into the N-Word Capitol Hill Walk is the strategy to incite. The media is doing their job for them by speaking of an unhinged white Tea Party mob. Absent any evidence other than creatively selected hand-crafted signs from the fringe of the audience that are presented to represent the whole, the media is simply repeating assumptions that Democrats and media elites have against fly-over types. What we have here is hardcore media elitism mixed with politically correct class warfare.
The Democrats need to kill the Tea Party movement. They need to marginalize and demonize those who would stand up to their hardball, toxic and anti-democratic tactics. Their strategy is to bait and incite the Tea Party and to use whatever they can get to silence the awakening giant. They have failed, epically, and the American people now see these tactics for what they are. At long last, new people every day are beginning to understand the kinds of people we are dealing with here.
Will the media keep falling into the trap? Their business model continues to fail each and every time they are suckered – unless, of course, they are doing it on purpose. The Republican Party failed in its attempt to make good with the Tea Party when its leaders apologized for it. When will the GOP stop playing Charlie Brown to the media’s Lucy? The Democratic party has been exposed as trying to create a Kristallnacht to save the Obama presidency along the fault line of race and the essence of the First Amendment. If the GOP does not have the intestinal fortitude to fight back, a growing number of disenchanted and disenfrachised Tea Party participants will have to do it themselves.
[…]
With President Obama over the last week calling attention to the Tea Parties and their “heated” rhetoric, he has officially connected himself to the civil war his minions have flailingly attempted to inflame. The only good thing to come of this is that we can now officially put to rest the laughable notion that Obama was going to be the first post-racial president.
Here, Breitbart deals at length with some of the observations I’ve been making of late — and because of his connection to the Tea Party movement, he is in a strong position to offer specific anecdotes as a gloss on the kinds of general observations I’ve been offering.
As I noted earlier in the week:
[…] the current administration, the majority in Congress, and their media enablers have done their jobs: they’ve created the fear necessary to make scapegoating palatable — and to turn what actually is the kind of dissent the founders would have encouraged into “hate crimes” worthy of censure, if not censorship. We have become Other — and our WalMarts and our strip malls and our fondness for Applebee’s is as terrifying as it is strange.
Breitbart seems sanguine about the public response to such tactics.
Me, while I’m certainly heartened by what I see as a growing pushback, I’m also worried that what is happening is that the two “sides” are being driven even further apart — and that this pushback has been anticipated, and is but a further aspect of the progressive strategy. Selection bias keeps progressives tuned to the messaging of left-liberal sites and the (activist) mainstream press, and those media organs continue to depict the Tea Partiers specifically (and conservatives and libertarians in general) as dangerous populists acting on reactionary impulses. That these organds don’t provide proof for these assertions is not surprising — but then, it is also, for them, unproblematic: for the tactic to work, they need only appeal to what “progressives” already know about their political adversaries. And what they already know, from years of repetition and ideological reinforcement, is that, if they themselves are good and righteous, those with whom they disagree must of necessity be evil and hate-filled. Therefore, progressives will see care that no hard evidence exists for their biases — but rather, only that those they consider ideologically dangerous are becoming increasingly active and ostentatious, and so their hatred and evil threatens to manifest itself not only in words but in actions.
This, to them, is “alarming.”
How soon then before the calls begin for police intervention, should the progressives find their singular event — that first physical confrontation — which they appear unfailingly willing to precipitate…?
We need strong counter-narratives instead of constantly reacting. If you truly hated blacks I’m not sure what you’d do differently than what the left has since The Great Society.
That “singular event” was last week. But the Hutaree siege fizzled. Poor choice of cut-outs. Total weenies.
How soon can the feds move another mole-incited non-plot to “live outside the ________ Compound” stage? If there’s a big tax day march planned, next weekend is the right time for a blood sacrifice. But I wouldn’t bet they have their shit together enough to make it happen.
So, election season.
How soon then before the calls begin for police intervention, should the progressives find their singular event — that first physical confrontation — which they appear unfailingly willing to precipitate…?
Yea, though I walk through the Valley of latte’ Commies and Other Assorted Thugs, my Video Cam and Phone Cam shall protect me.
Manson seems to be in the air this morning. Reminded me of a documentary from 1973 when the events were still fresh.
Starting a war between two parties so as to rule over the shattered remains or perhaps just for the shattering.
The way the narrative breaks down is when independents/swing voters see that the state run media is lying. Say Joe and Jane Independent know Mom & Pop are Tea Partyers. Hearing that Mom & Pop are vicious racists just isn’t going to wash.
“..their singular event”
The Ernst vom Rath analogue is it? Or are we at some much earlier stage in the re-track of demon making?
Jeff,
I’m not sure that the two sides are being driven further apart. Rather, the moderate center left progressive facade is crumbling, and moderate and independent voters are appalled by what they see. The radical progressives, as you note, have formiddable weapons, especially the lapdog media, but the core consituents of the tea party movement are increasingly media savvy–that is, they know the old media is corrupt; hence, the tanking ratings for the major old media organs.
This election cycle is critical (duh), as is the next legislative session. Obama will appear to triangulate–off shore drilling, etc.–while ramming home crap and tax, etc. The Paul Ryans of the world need to step up and keep talking. People are beginning to listen. The progrssives will grow increaingly desperate as the summer goes on and no doubt will bait (or fabricate) a violent response. But the polls tell a troubling story for them. The progs misunderestimated the tea partiers. Grandma and Uncle Billy watch Fox, and think that Keith Olbermann is a douche. I’m not sure the race card can work in this environment.
Beck has been warning about giving them the excuse for quite a while now.
Let’s not forget amnesty. If Obama can get legal status for 30 million illegal aliens, he’ll have a group who will vote for his party forever, as will their descendants.
I find it terrifying that this adminstration pushed through the Health Care bill in the face of open wide-spread opposition. This means to me that they have a plan that will neutralize the opinions of Americans and allow the Democrats free rein. Amnesty is the best and shortest route to this goal.
I’m going to be attending the Rancho Cucamonga TEA Party again this year on April 15 (corner of Foothill and Day Creek). I’m not only going armed this time with my camera, but with a Vado HD camcorder.
The organizer of this event has sent out this email to us:
This really is a soft civil war.
And in the amnesty front, it is depressing that McCain and Graham are our sentinels on the bulwark.
I think he and the Democrats will find that people who cross borders willy-nilly are a tad more fickle than they expect.
Look what Jack Cashill discovered
Hmmmm.
Old dad,
It’s not really “crap and tax”. It’s called “Like it or not, I’m shoving this historically proven bullshit down your stupid moron throats”.
Beck has been warning about giving them the excuse for quite a while now.
Beck has a mole in the White House.
That’s so cool I can’t even stand it.
And in the amnesty front, it is depressing that McCain and Graham are our sentinels on the bulwark.
Both need a good swift kick in the head.
ATTN LEFTIES: I am proposing violence against Republican Senators, which is not a problem for you, right?
I think in my head that also what they’re doing is pushing the right to the right in people’s perceptions so the much more left left left dirty socialist congress what remains after November will look more centrist and the new and improved Team R will be associated with the Tea Party caricature.
That Toyota article yesterday was hopeful though.
Lone Dog,
That reminds me of another reason I hate (yes, I’m a hater) the progs. Lefties, keep your miserable politics out of my orifices.
Darleen,
Racist!
hf, did you read BRD’s thing in the Pub? The question it raises, I think, is how the remnant left gets to appear more centrist when that remnant has driven away their own current centrist allies? Who’ll still think of themselves as Democrats I guess, in some small recess in their grey matter. And we now have cnn reporting democrats joining the Tea Party movement. Which while only the first such article I’ve seen, surely won’t be the last.
It will be a neat trick indeed should we find a minority within a minority, while hanging themselves out at the extreme left end of an American political context, nevertheless claiming a mantel of centrism. Seems implausible on its face to me.
I agree, and I tried to say as much.
But I do think the point Old Dad makes is a good one. The tipping point is when even the progressives begin to realize that, by six degrees of separation, they know some tea party members who aren’t really all that racist, homophobic, or even craven morons who like to bang a cousin every now and then.
OT: I’m linking this simply because it’s putting a dent in my Saturday. Boo!
Think I’ll go get a burrito and a big, cold horchata. Those cheer me up.
I think in my head that also what they’re doing is pushing the right to the right in people’s perceptions so the much more left left left dirty socialist congress what remains after November will look more centrist and the new and improved Team R will be associated with the Tea Party caricature.
Except you have that backwards. Pushing the right farther right makes the left look farther left. Pushing the right to the left makes the left look centrist. That was the problem with McCain.
thanks sdferr I will read Mr. BRD later… it’s nice to see him back
I might will defend my thinkings later Mr. Moe… this beautiful day has messed with my head to where I want to not do that right now
[…] Jeff G at Protein Wisdom links Breitbart and discusses the deliberate Democratic strategy to portray Tea Party activists, and indeed any opposition to Obamacare, as racist. This Democratic strategy is shameful, but hardly unexpected. […]
Understand completely. Hell, I was too lazy to go fishing this morning.
I think it might work both ways, actually. Portraying the right as far right suggests that leftism is centrism. At the same time, bringing the “right” in line with the left accomplishes the same thing.
To the extent that this is a cynical strategy designed to falsify an image of Obama’s opposition for temporary political advantage, be the opposition writ as Tea Partyers or Republicans generally, I find I can’t help but leap toward an end gaming of the strategy, and particularly where the strategy can be presumed to fail. What to make of living with such as these in the aftermath? Or hell, for that matter, right now in the middle of the thing?
Our side tends to be more forgiving?
Perhaps, but the human thing is still going to be such as to seek if not demand justice. This falsification, knowingly done, isn’t just. We know this. And chafe.
I return to Billy. Did Taggart’s machinations include his own demise? Hardly. Yet weirdly, his plan successfully presses Billy into an unexpected temporal error, the uncontrolled crushing blow, which in turn makes of Billy an icon to justice outside the Captain’s realm. Fuck all if that’s any good.
Well, we chafe. Others haven’t even moved on from being embarrassed that we’d be so uncouth as to admit such.
Rational people tend to be more forgiving and willing to compromise than True Believers and the highly dogmatic, it would seem.
I suppose those falsely portrayed may be inclined to forgive the false portrayal, if that portrayal be admitted as false by those who’ve painted it. Less so should the false painters persist, no? Where it comes to compromise though, who in their right mind compromises on terms of their own enslavement who has still some volition to spare in the matter? The rational?
The old saying that art is a lie that tells the truth is so embedded in the emotional composition of progressives that I don’t know that this is as “benignly” cynical as a political strategy. More like a pathology. These are not people with functioning ideological depth perception. They’re as capable of reading polls as anyone else, but their knee-jerk takeaway is invariably about the message and the obstacles to imparting it.
I am speaking in generalities, not extremes. It seems to me that by definition rational people would understand the necessity of compromise more than the rigid dogmatist.
And there is no rational compromise on being enslaved.
I don’t think you are wrong in that B Moe (35), not at all.
The question I’d pose though goes to the manner of the opponent we seem to face, who can be content to lie in this way, and how we undertake to deal with them. Or do I mistake you to this extent, that the rigid dogmatist of whom you speak is precisely the opponent who is happy to lie, so you and I are pointing at the same object from different directions?
Abe,
I think you might be too kind to the progs, especially those at the top. They’re cynical manipulative bastards who are mostly interested in a comfy retirement at our expense. Haven’t seen one recently who was willing to go to the matresses. The silly saps in the middle are waking up. Little junior and sissy are graduating from Dartmouth with no jobs. Mummsie and Pops’ investment accounts have gone to hell. Mummsie won’t give up her lattes and so Pops is in a world of hurt. This silly redistribution bullshit doesn’t seem like such a good idea.
The true progs are nazis. The goofy middle class progs are posers until their delusion starts to get in their knickers. Watch’em dump Obama by the droves when they finally figure out that they’re being shtupped, and by the One no less.
In this specific case, the Democrats against the Tea Party, yes, I think the dogma of the Democrats encourages them to lie if it serves the greater purpose. And I don’t think this attack is for temporary goals, they want to portray the Tea Partiers, and by extension Limbaugh, Beck, et al as violent anti-Americans to justify there coming attacks on the First Amendment. They nearly have the right backed into a no-win situation, when it becomes obvious violence is the only argument it will be too late to use it.
Somewhat to Abe’s suggestion, the apparent unity of purpose amongst the democrat leadership, the rank and file and the progressive media may well be an instance of an emergent order itself, undirected as such in a top down hierarchical stratagem, but simply growing logically from the premises taken up with their mother’s milk as they seek to fill the politico-ecological niches they find along the way. (Or perhaps something akin to the parallel evolution of particular adaptations seen in nature, like eyes.)
However ironical that would be, should it be true, it wouldn’t make much difference from our point of view as regards the acts they undertake to do and how we need to respond to them.
What scares hell out of the lefties re the TEA Parties isn’t that the TEA Parties are some sort of lunatic fringe, but rather that They’re not. Check out this video of David Letterman’s interview with Pat Stout, President of the Sandpoint Idaho TEA Party and you’ll understand exactly why the lefties are terrified.
Yes, she’s a Little Old Lady in Tennis Shoes. The politicians and bureaucrats might think they run the country, but where the rubber meets the road it’s the Little Old Ladies in Tennis Shoes who get’er done. They’re the ones who run for all those unpaid positions on the school board, the library board, and the parks board. They’re the ones who hold raffles and bake sales to buy new playground equipment. They’re the ones willing to run for treasurer of their little towns. They’re the poll watchers, the county fair organizers, and the audience that keeps the city commission honest.
They’re universally loved and revered, and a little bit feared because they’ve seen it all, know nonsense when they see it, and aren’t afraid to say so. The Little Old Ladies in Tennis Shoes are a force to be reckoned with and when you’ve lost the Little Old Ladies in Tennis Shoes you’ve got big problems.
I agree with everything you said Old Dad. And certainly the lack of political seriousness among the upper-middle-class over the last 20 years or so is due for a harsh jolt of reality. I’m not disagreeing with the notion that this is a cynical manuever by those at the top either, but I’m fairly sure it was borne of an expectation that such things would actually transpire. Ultimately this all has a better parallel to a bunch of little old Jesus ladies who see a weeping Virgin Mary on an exterior wall of a 7-Eleven than in some Machiavellian master plan. That the stakes are infinitely higher is why we damn well better accept that we’re at war with these fuckers.
Oh, it’s never too late for self-preservation, B Moe. But it is too early.
Wait, Patty Murray is the driving force? Uh-oh.
I’d agree that the unseriousness of the upper middle (even middle middle) definitely contributed to this. That’s why the “no new taxes below $250k” was so effective. As he continues to break that pledge, that support won’t just slip, it’ll plummet. I’m noticing it already in a variety of different conversations.
Nothing like seeing your taxes go up across the board to refocus the mind.
I just listened to the Steve Cohen interview at HA. Damn. Just damn. And him a Tennessee guy no less. How secure must he feel to make this sort of smear? And on what grounds (feel so secure)?
Towards that, right now people are asking their CFPs how they can most prudently invest and what they’re hearing back is much more about tax avoidance than they’re used to.
Well, the collective form of tax avoidance is voting out statists.
I find it fascinating that “soccer moms” were the most celebrated electoral slice in America when they trended toward Bill Clinton, or Obama, but now that this demographic is the heart and soul of the Tea Party movement, they are invisible. Tens of thousands of people gather, a majority of them middle class females, and matronly at that, and the media and the Democrats can only find angry white males. It must be racism propelling the Tea Party agenda.
Of course it’s racism; leftypigs have redefined “racism” to mean “principled opposition to Obama”.
Abe,
I got your back.
School bus full of kids. They won’t stop until they’ve burnt one.
Derek
My Mama was killed by a little old lady in tennis shoes, you know.
Fell down a well all by herself, she did.
Super genius!*
and some help getting there.
– Brevity is the soul of wit, Mr. President.
– Not so, and let me explain why at length…
I did the unusual and stopped mid-thread to respond to something. Usually I read all the comments before commenting myself, usually copying a comment portion a couple of times before I paste a quote. here I go:
“And we now have cnn reporting democrats joining the Tea Party movement. Which while only the first such article I’ve seen, surely won’t be the last.”
I just want to say if you have been to a Tea Party, you will see all the different “brands” involved, every demographic represented, all worried about the crazy spending and indebting (enslaving) of our children, even Grandchildren.
That you may be surprised that CNN is reporting what anyone that’s been to a Tea Party knows, is understandable. But I think it bares mentioning that the surprise should be due to non Tea party peoples ignorance of the make up of the Tea parties, not that Democrats attending is something new.
The Tea parties have always cut across the spectrum, that’s what is unique about it.
And dangerous to our ruling class.
That’s certainly fair enough to point out Lee. There were democrats at the gathering I went to downtown almost a year ago now, for instance.
LBascom is right. The Tea Party movement is not 1994 Republican outrage; it’s 2010 American outrage. The elites of both parties don’t yet understand, but they will come November.
The tipping point is when even the progressives begin to realize that, by six degrees of separation, they know some tea party members who aren’t really all that racist, homophobic, or even craven morons who like to bang a cousin every now and then.
Given what Kiteley and Danzinger did to you, though, I don’t know why they would. The more absurd the narrative, the more it will cost them to stand astride history and yell “stop.”
Rank-and-file democrats are already figuring it out. Proggs, by definition, lack both the courage and devotion to TRVTH over tribe to come to any realization that would get them kicked out of the salons.
the apparent unity of purpose amongst the democrat leadership, the rank and file and the progressive media may well be an instance of an emergent order itself, undirected as such in a top down hierarchical stratagem,
On the other hand, Rahm Emmanual does have those regular conversations with members of the press.
Tammy Bruce talks about how NOW used to engage in coordination of message with the press back in the day. There’s no reason to think they’ve changed.
bh
Keerist Almighty, The One really does think he’s Hugo Chavez!
School bus full of kids. They won’t stop until they’ve burnt one.
And blamed it on us.
If it ever comes to that, they’ll do it only so they can blame it on us.
The Tea Party movement is not 1994 Republican outrage; it’s 2010 American outrage
I heard someone else say (IIRC, Dennis Prager) that 1994 was about taxes, 2010 is about spending (ie government growth). It is quite the difference.
And as mild mannered as Prager usually is, he’s really on a tear that no one should vote for ANY Republican that doesn’t wholeheartedly commit to REPEAL.
If Prager is willing to go full-on civil disobedience — including jail time — to protest gubmint overreach, then things are truly bad.
” Proggs, by definition, lack both the courage and devotion to TRVTH over tribe to come to any realization that would get them kicked out of the salons.”
I’m saying, we really need to get out of the defensive posture.
If someone even creates a whiff of racist accusation, for example, we need to aggressively make them defend their statement intellectually, or have it shoved down their throat so far they have little pellets of racism falling out their own asses.
The antisemitic, family raping, un-American pricks need to be branded with a mushroom bruise every time they spread their propaganda.
Every time, consistency counts.
Now Obama is on the halftime show of the MSU/Butler game.
He is Paris Hilton’s vagina. It’s just too much. Make it stop.
obama on see bs what agony
From bh’s link above. From Obama’s 17 minute answer. My bold.
Freedom, liberty, only if allowed. “Positive Rights” work like that. Allowed, allowance, for the children we all are to be.
we have been, up until last week, the only advanced country that allows 50 million of its citizens to not have any health insurance,” he said.
I thought it was 30MM. Is he now saying that 20MM people have lost their coverage in the last week? Or is he just stupid? Could go either way.
Since I called Barcky stupid, I’m quite obviously a vile racist. For that crime I sentence myself to a single malt and a 2 inch thick ribeye. A tough sentence to be sure, but I’m all about the PC. One must make amends.
I’m saying, we really need to get out of the defensive posture.
The delightful thing about the “racism” charge is that you can’t defend against it and you can’t prove it, either, absent KKK robes, a whites-only entrance on your house, you on tape uttering a racial epithet.
We’re racist by definition. Let’s say that someone has the opportunity to shout “Prove it!” to some smarmy journalist. What happens then?
Is he now saying that 20MM people have lost their coverage in the last week?
Hey, you lose your job, you lose your coverage.
I’m just sayin’.
good way to create a crisis
baracky the anti bush
don’t drill here
Be a shame to let it go to waste…
Sheesh, only a couple of days ago Juan had the Gadsden flag a “a separate flag- it’s a new flag that they have created. But it’s the same imagery that was on Timothy McVeigh, you know? I mean, this is the kind of thing that’s worrisome to me. I don’t see how you can get away from it.” Now?
This is a filthy game you’re playing, old Juan.
yo juan g-20 protests ring a bell
are the tea partiers bill ayers wannabes?
I notice the weasel phrase. [bolded]
But even with that, since there was a walk-back/denial by Emanuel Cleaver IIRC, then this statement is so inoperative, so soon.
He pretends to eschew what he does as he does it. It stinks.
Yes. That’s exactly what it is.
I think I prefer “Really? Why would you think that?”
Juan, call him Sam, Williams then.
Hey Juan, how about the fact that it’s bullshit? Does that move your needle at all?
i think alot these civil rights folks don’t have their heart in baracky’s agenda. mr juan way too much npr stepitfetchit
Sort of like your dumbass 12 year old deciding to run away from your oppression for greener pastures. Yes, it’s deeply concerning, and you really want to solve it, but it ain’t gonna change the world.
The choir will sing, but they’re not selling anything to anybody. That’s why Breitbart is sanguine. Truth still works.
“The delightful thing about the “racism” charge is that you can’t defend against it and you can’t prove it, either, absent KKK robes, a whites-only entrance on your house, you on tape uttering a racial epithet.
We’re racist by definition. Let’s say that someone has the opportunity to shout “Prove it!” to some smarmy journalist. What happens then?”
Assume the person calling you a racist is doing so because of their own internalized racial stereotypes, point out the ease with which they exploit and cheapen genuine racism for their own pathetic agenda , and make them defend your counter charges.
Hells yeah, Lee.
“Hispanic voters are going to be looking at Republicans and their tea party supporters for evidence of racism in any effort to block reform.”
Yeah, but what about that 6th generation “Hispanic-American” who feels the same way as the 3rd generation “Irish-American”?
It ain’t about the “race”, it’s about the illegality.
“I think he and the Democrats will find that people who cross borders willy-nilly are a tad more fickle than they expect.”
I’ve met someone who came across the border with a coyote. The story he told was quite harrowing, not “willy-nilly.”
I’ve met someone who cam across the border with a dachshund. The story he told was quite whimsical, not “harrowing.”
Paul Rahe:
On this reading, it’s no wonder Obama can appear to misunderstand the Tea Party movement. Turns out, this isn’t a pretense on his part. He couldn’t have a clue. They are simply too American to be known by him.