This just in: the Republicans of Kentucky elected a self-proclaimed Tea Party candidate to be their nominee for one of their U.S. Senate seats. Really. Rand Paul, son of Texas congressman and self-proclaimed libertarian Ron Paul.
Two years ago I had several friends who chose to vote for Ron Paul during California’s primaries, convinced he was the man because Paul was one of the few, if not only, Republicans to oppose Bush’s war in Iraq. I tried to reason with them that although Paul’s opposition to Bush’s war was admirable, he held some abhorrent views on several other issues, making Ron Paul a terrible choice for a candidate, one who would not win a general election.
Instead, of course, the Republicans gave us Senator Jon McCain. How fortuitous was that! Since that disastrous presidential election (for the Republicans) the Republican Party for the most part has been tacking even farther right in every effort to please and subjugate themselves to their dwindling base.
Case in point: the Second Amendment wingnuts are back at it, convinced President Obama and the Democrats are coming for their guns. They had those two rallies in and around Washington, D.C. in support of the Second Amendment, the one in the capital itself was unarmed, due to local ordinances that forbid it, and the other taking place simultaneously just outside of Washington in Virginia with armed protestors.
Someone in that movement actually thinks it’s a smart move to threaten the U.S. government with a show of arms. It’s like the guy who showed up at an event in New Hampshire, featuring President Obama, wearing a loaded sidearm.
The protestor, William Kostric, was holding a sign that said, “It is time to water the Tree of Liberty,” a reference to the famous Thomas Jefferson quote: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
The nutcase was obviously threatening the president, although on Hardball With Chris Matthews Kostric claimed he was not advocating violence, but “advocating an informed society, an armed society, a polite society." A polite society that carries loaded weapons and signs designed to threaten certain political and government figures. Isn’t that funny.
So the Republican Party and the Teabaggers have officially wedded — much to Mitch O’Connell’s dismay. They’ve been dancing around each other, claiming the one isn’t the other’s dance partner — as if anyone was believing it — but now, with a self-described Teabagger carrying their banner in Kentucky’s election for the Senate seat being vacated by their other political nut, Republican Jim Bunning.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky’s Class III Senator, supported Paul’s Republican opponent, Trey Grayson. With a bit of humility, or more likely trepidation and suspicion, McConnell said he would support and help Paul win the general election in November. During the campaign for the primary, Paul called McConnell part of the problem in Washington.
Paul, like the Teabaggers who voted for him, has no solutions, he just knows what he’s against: a Black man as president; a Democrat-controlled Congress, the fantasy conspiracy of the current government coming for everyone’s guns.
He’s also against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But, as of last week, not completely. Paul said the provisions of the law the prevent discrimination in government institutions and institutions that receive federal money are right and good, but that private businesses shouldn’t be prevented from denying services to people based on the color of their skin — or their religion, sexual orientation or, we can imagine, political affiliation.
After announcing his disdain for Civil Rights legislation, Paul has been steadily back-pedaling from his views. Republicans have been denouncing his statements, calling them out of step with the Republican Party, as RNC Chairman Michael Steele said a few days ago.
Getting pummeled daily in the press, by members of his own party, Paul has gone off the radar, canceling an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press. That’s like a singer canceling a concert at Carnegie Hall because he (or she) has sang a song no one likes.
The ascendancy of Rand Paul to the high position of being the party’s nominee for a Senate seat says a lot about both the Tea Party and the Republican Party. There’s no question the former is a part of the latter and there’s no question the extreme views of the Tea Party are driving the base of the Republican Party to the polls and soon the Republican Party will be synonymous with extreme right wing nuttery. As if it isn’t already.
Republicans like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin have endorsed the Teabaggers and have stoked their support, Bachmann most humorously, if not dangerously. She’s the person who said, “Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful, but there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is harmful.”
That one is pretty funny … considering that inhaling just carbon dioxide could kill us. We need oxygen, not carbon dioxide, to live.
And let’s not forget this is the party of “Drill Baby, Drill!”
These are the people who show up to anti-Obama rallies with signs showing the president with a Hitler mustache. These are the people who simultaneously call the president (and Democrats) a Socialist and a Nazi, then try to claim the two political philosophies are the same.
These are the people who show up at rallies with loaded firearms and threaten public figures with signs about watering the tree of liberty.
These are the people who cheered loudly when former Congressman Tom Tancredo told a Teabagger gathering Barack Obama was elected because, “…we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.”
Talk about overt racism! These were the very same tactics used by the racist South to keep African-Americans from voting, before the voting Rights Act of 1965 banned them over 40 years ago.
This is what the Tea Party and Rand Paul — and now by extension, the Republican Party — represent. Oh, Republicans will deny it of course, and even Rand Paul is backing away from himself, but the proof is there. Paul got the Teabagger vote precisely because he embraced and gave voice to their extreme views.
Sarah Palin is the darling of the Teabagger crowd for precisely the same reason.
The scariest thing Rand Paul has said during his campaign hasn’t been talked about much, his views on civil rights taking the spotlight. But this is eye-opening, both because Paul states he is in league with the Teabaggers and he echoes one of the most fervent views of the tea bag crowd: “I have a message from the tea party, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words. We’ve come to take our government back.”
Take it back from who, or what? A duly elected Congress and President? That’s what the tea bag crowd seems to forget: the Democrats were elected by their fellow U.S. citizens. So, this small minority of people, maybe 15% of the population, if you include those who might scratch their heads and wonder if there’s any truth to some of the nonsense the Teabaggers spew, have decided their government has been taken away from them, simply because people who don’t share their political philosophies are now in charge.
That’s what happened when Bill Clinton was elected president 18 years ago. The militias formed and became noisy; and remember this: Timothy McVie had ties to militias.
Simply because the people who now control government don’t share their political views, the Tea Bag crowd now threatens armed insurrection and advocates a return to the days when businesses and government could discriminate against people based on the color of someone’s skin.
And that’s a reason to worry about Rand Paul possibly getting elected to the U.S. Senate. Should he be given a voice in Congress, the extreme views of the far right wing will have another voice in government. We already have at least 150 of them serving in Congress already, way too many for the country to be safe.
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