Tea Partiers React With Fury To World They Can’t Control - Cynthia Tucker, National Memo

[highplainsdem]

http://www.nationalmemo.com/tea-partiers-react-with-fury-to-world-they-cant-control/

The ultraconservatives who have taken over the Republican Party are motivated by many things — antipathy toward the federal government, conservative religious beliefs and a traditional Republican suspicion of taxes, among them. But the most powerful force animating their fight is a deep-seated racial antagonism.

Don’t take my word for it. Democracy Corps, a political research and polling group headed by Stanley Greenberg and James Carville, has published a report from a series of focus groups conducted with segments of the Republican Party — moderates, evangelicals and Tea Partiers.

The report confirms that Republicans, especially the Tea Partiers, “are very conscious of being white in a country that is increasingly minority. The race issue is very much alive.” It also notes that “Barack Obama and Obamacare is a racial flashpoint for many evangelical and Tea Party voters.”

-snip-

Democracy Corps isn’t the only research group that has ferreted out the racial antagonism at the heart of Tea Partiers’ radicalism. Writing in The New York Times, journalist Thomas Edsall shared portions of an email exchange with political scientist Christopher Parker, co-author of Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America. Parker said that “reactionary conservatives” believe “social change is subversive to the America with which they’ve become familiar, i.e., white, mainly male, Protestant, native born, straight. ‘Real Americans,’ in other words.”

-snip-

This is an existential battle, and they’re willing to burn down the country to save it from people of color. That’s why they’re willing to risk defaulting on the nation’s debt for the first time in history.

-snip-

Tucker concludes that "the only whiff of good news is that Tea Party supporters tend to be older than average" amd they'll "be replaced by a younger voting bloc whose members don’t hew to their antediluvian views."

[spanone]

1. racists....that's what's fueling the TP

[hobbit709]

2. They can't stand the fact there's a black man in the White House and he's not the butler.

That is the main issue to these people.

[freshwest]

3. Interesting that I see racial harmony everyday where I live. The people are making a better life for

themselves and their children.

The majority, no matter where they came from, believe in the same things that Obama campaigned on in 2008 and 2012: Education, hard work, and living responsible lives. It also includes being active to help everyone as a community, not hiding in your castle. standing with the past and fighting the present and the future, now being overtaken by others who know better.

This way of being happy and prosperous is the tradition of many people, not based on race, culture or country, but on how one lives life, day to day.

We do have others who have gone the road they felt they must, and their time is spent in a dream world, devouring media, or going gambling for their financial salvation in casinos to while away their time in the face of uncomfortable realities, but not really desperate.

Then there are those in thrall to alcohol and other drugs, also to while away their spare time. The ones you see taking action to better their lives spend that time in community college, volunteering or other things to help their health and finances.

I've seen times when good leaders were voted out in favor of the crowd at the beer joint who voted in their pals and then did nothing for the community at large, because they were not capable of doing anything positive. Literally. But they had a loyal crew who they rewarded with government money later

What I've seen of racial or religious animosity from disaffected whites are primarily those who went only so far in life and education, found a job and stopped their development. In doing so, they missed opportunities looking back at the past. Which certainly doesn't apply to all, understand I am talking of a narrow group that stews in their own hatred daily, and won't give it up. They don't accept that the past world of John Wayne and the culture they lived in as children is no longer of interest and is not a guide for many people.

Those who embraced the future and others, seeing them as individuals and not an invading army that would take anything from them, are not into the racial divide. At this time, those who would destroy everything out of temper, are nihilists and fools.

They could get along and prosper. But they wanted to make sure that those strangers did not prosper and that they alone could stay in a world that no longer exists, a dream they refuse to give up. And that was their fatal error, not believing in the American Ideal of equality. That's what it all boils down to in the end.