| The mounting establishment backlash against pointing out the obvious racist tinge to some of the Tea Baggers' signs, rhetoric, and paranoid fantasies reminded me of a story I should have written about long ago: there was a shakeup in the Ravali Country Republican central committee earlier this month, in which three chairpersons resigned.
Why? Ostensibly because "'fake' Republicans have taken over the party at the local, state and federal levels." But the more deep-seated reason?
Cox and Docteur said a factor in their resignation was the Central Committee's response to the controversial "No Mo Bro" sign displayed at last month's Stevensville Creamery Picnic parade.
Cox, Docteur and Thayer asked Cathy Kulonis, a precinct committeewoman who displayed the sign, to resign because they considered it racist, offensive and embarrassing to the Republican Party.
Kulonis refused to resign, saying the sign wasn't racist.
The Central Committee also said "No Mo Bro" wasn't racist, but that it wasn't a good choice of words given the current political climate.
The committee chastised Cox, Docteur and Thayer for contacting the Ravalli Republic and airing the party's "dirty laundry" in public.
Only an idiot would think the sign wasn't racist - would Kulonis had written the same sign were, say, John Kerry president? The rejection of Cox, Docteur, and Thayer, and the endorsement of Kulonis' sign signals Ravalli County Republicans embrace the extremist right's lunatic and, yes, racist messages.
The story traditional media should be covering isn't that the racism present in the Tea Bagger movement has been overblown, but how willing traditional party structures are to embrace it. |
