The Tea Party (who is really the Republican party but pretends they're not) held a rally in Tampa yesterday with a plethora of wingnut speakers including Jason Chaffetz and Michele Bachmann. However, these detestable remarks by Neal Boortz, right-wing Limbaugh wannabe hate talker, revealed the motives behind much of the right-wing movement to end public education.
Here's what he said, via Right Wing Watch:
Let me change your language on two things. […]
They are not public schools, they are government schools. They are owned by, staffed by, operated by and forced upon by the government.
And, ladies and gentlemen, it is 100 years of government education that led us to the point that a man like Barack Obama could be sworn in as president of the United States.
So, wherever you are, preach school choice.
So, it doesn't get much more straightforward than that, does it?
Tim Wise published a brilliant essay yesterday about how deep the right wing has lunged into overt and covert racism:
How many times, one is left to wonder, must a person be called un-American before it’s accurate to claim that he’s being accused of being foreign, and a danger to the nation? A cancer to be excised from the body politic?
How many times can a man be the butt of racist humor, or likened to black dictators, or accused of seeking racial revenge upon white people, before it is no longer outrageous or the playing of some mystical, magical race card to assert that, indeed, the people doing these things are really just race-baiting white nationalists in conservative garb?
How long, in short, before we call that which walks and talks like a duck, a f*cking duck?
You should read the whole post, frame it, print it, and hand it out at Tea Party rallies, frankly. It's not going to get better. It's going to get worse. The Republican party has alienated Latinos, African-Americans, women, and moderates. The only thing they have left are scared white people, and they'd have to win a huge majority of them to win this election. The People's View:
Because Mitt Romney cannot run on Romney Hood. He cannot run on handing over women's health care decisions to their bosses. He cannot run on the Romney-Ryan budget to end Medicare once and for all, and on ending all programs that help give people at the bottom of the economic ladder a fighting chance to help themselves. He cannot run on ending our social and generational commitment, stealing the money, and giving it away to the super rich and multimillionaires. He cannot run on his vision of a dirty energy future of America. He cannot run on destroying America's social fabric and our sense of responsibility for one another.
He cannot run on destroying America's social fabric, but he sure as hell can try to tear that fabric apart. He can run on resentment. He can run on lies. He can run by telling poor white people that poor black people and poor brown people are to blame for their lot in life. He can run by telling people that "banks aren't bad people", and presumably, it was the poor people that tanked the economy by taking out liar loans they were sold by the banks. He can run on selling the idea that these poor black and brown people don't deserve the right to vote. After all, black people are all criminals, and those Mexicans, you know where they're from! Not like Mitt Romney, who was never asked questions about where he was born.
The fact of the matter is that for the Republicans, exploiting racism is an important election strategy. But until a decade or so ago, it used to be that they simply used the racism within their base to win election with a dog whistle once in a while. But now, with the advent of the Teabaggers, the inmates are running the asylum. Now, exploiting racist emotions are not enough (both in terms of electoral strategy and in terms of toeing the Teabagging line). Now, racism and bigotry is not simply part of the GOP strategy to win elections. It is the sole Republican strategy to win elections.
Hence, the red meat thrown to the base. It will get redder, bloodier, and uglier before the end.
