It was a nice debate this afternoon even if I couldn’t see anyone until the video went up because there wasn’t a monitor at the studio. Most of the conversations that I have with people who disagree end up with them going CAPSLOCK on me and yelling “teabagger.” (Or just name-calling, like the editor of Salon.) It was a pleasant change.
I won’t say that it wasn’t difficult to answer questions where the stated presupposition is that you’re a racist/birther/secessionist simply because you believe in limited government and states’ rights under the 10th Amendment. I’m not a birther, you all know how I feel about that. You’re immediately put on the defensive because your motive for believing what you believe was possibly just maligned, along with your character, so you have to combine refuting that point with answering the original question. I’m a talker; it’s darn near impossible for most to sit on their hands while others establish your motives, even more so for me.
We’ve had accusations of invective-tossing which were disproved beyond all doubt but are still purposefully used by people who wish to invalidate the tea party (meanwhile the Gladney hate crime remains without justice or attention from any of the people who perpetuate the false DC incident); people who claim that the tea party is all southern without noting that the past several Democratic presidents were all white southern men; and the continuing omission of how the recently-passed legislation violates both the commerce and welfare clauses of the Constitution.
The people who continue to play identity politics with this reside on the left. They ignore the contributions of black conservatives to this movement which is surprising. They likely would not like to be called racists for that move anymore than people within the tea party movement would like to be called “racists” simply because they oppose government which exceeds its power as defined in the Constitution. (Except I do wonder why black conservatives are so ignored by the left.)
No one will discuss substance; people continue to shift the focus away from the above issues, away from the fuzzy math of CBO figures, away from the concern for coal-states should cap-and-tax be implemented; away from ways to make legal immigration work better than rewarding those who enter the country illegally – and instead perpetuate identity politics.
It does honest political discourse a disservice.
FYI – here’s the NYT story on McCain’s citizenship based upon his birth on a military base near the Panama Canal.
*Update: @h8grouthink shares this link of leftist protest signs.
Pivoting off a New York Times column by Frank Rich that accused tea partiers of being more afraid of “a black president and a female Speaker of the House” than by oncoming big government, Chris Matthews, once again, accused tea partiers of sexism and racism, on Monday’s Hardball, and even brought on a Princeton professor to buttress his charges. However conservative talk show host Dana Loesch was on hand to rebut, point by point, Matthews and his guests’ ugly accusations about the right as she fended off allegations of Birtherism by pointing out the nutty Trutherism that exists on the left and denied charges of secessionism by clarifying the tea partiers are about 10th Amendment principles. For his part Matthews claimed the Birthers were a fixture on the right but Truthers weren’t “a part of the Obama coalition.”
Let’s not forget Van Jones, the former green jobs czar who lost his job because he signed a 911 truther petition – or, as the Newbusters commenters and some emailers have pointed out, Phillip Berg who filed the first suit in the birth certificate argument was a registered Democrat who worked for Hillary Clinton.
****On Yid with Lid
*****From Paul, who sends this link that further backs up my statement on how 911 trutherism is a leftistst institution:
Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.
Republicans reject that view and, by a 7-to-1 margin, say the President did not know in advance about the attacks. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 18% believe the President knew and 57% take the opposite view.
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