The Republican Party’s secret motto: “Don’t tread on my right to tread on you”

[DonViejo]

"Small government" conservatives talk about limiting federal power — except when it comes to the stuff they want

CONOR LYNCH

Since President Obama came into office, the Republican party has increasingly become the “Don’t tread on me” party — or, more accurately, the “Don’t tread on my right to tread on others” party. Some of the most popular right-wing demagogues of today have achieved their political fame with this aggressive anti-federal government schtick, full of paranoid hostility and belligerence. From screaming of death panels to claiming socialist plots of wealth redistribution — this modern form of what Richard Hofstadter once called the “paranoid style” of American politics has become the status quo in the Republican party. This shift was a kind of knee-jerk reaction to the rise of Obama — a mixture of racial and political fears that were pushed hard by certain right wing media figures and organizations like the following:

“The president of the United States? We’re talking now about a Supreme Court justice? The days of them [racial minorities] not having any power are over, and they are angry. And they want to use their power as a means of retribution. That’s what Obama’s about, gang. He’s angry, he’s gon’ cut this country down to size, he’s gon’ make it pay for all its multicultural mistakes that it has made, its mistreatment of minorities. I know exactly what’s going on.” – Rush Limbaugh, 2009.

This fear of “minority retribution” has shaped the extremist Tea Party movement, taking up the same kind of paranoid politics that the John Birch Society did in the 1960s, when its leader, Robert Welch, claimed that Dwight Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent of the communist conspiracy.” Today, the communist plot proved to be a silly imagination of an old loon with money, so minorities with power and Jihadi sympathizing socialists are the new enemies.

And so, conservatives have resurrected the classic Gadsden flag, with those strong words, “don’t tread on me” — aimed directly at Obama and his imagined minority/socialist-run government. But these kinds of Tea Party conservatives are not completely convinced of these words, except when they fully support their own views of morality. A majority of these same people, for example, are surely not opposed to the government limiting the rights of woman by criminalizing abortion and restricting access to contraceptives, or keeping gay marriage illegal. They likely cheered yesterday, for example, when Rick Santorum called for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.)

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http://www.salon.com/2015/07/14/the_republican_partys_secret_motto_dont_tread_on_my_right_to_tread_on_you/

[tblue]

1. Quick--Somebody put that on a t-shirt!

That's exactly who they are. Bigots & bullies.

[malaise]

2. Nailed it

Rec