Teabagging: Day Two

Last evening, Tom Tancredo got things going with his kickoff speech. He had some very interesting things to say, things like calling the tea party movement "the most important political movement in the United States since the Civil War." What does that even mean? Is he advocating secession? He called the "cult of multiculturalism" as big a threat as our fiscal problems. He called Sarah Palin a "really, really pretty Margaret Thatcher." He called for implementing a "literacy test" for voters, a tactic that was used in the segregationist South in order to keep blacks from voting, saying that President Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country." He went on to say this:

People who could not spell the word vote or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House—his name is Barack Hussein Obama.

Although cheers erupted at this, apparently, the room wasn't filled; I guess that's a good thing, since as few people as possible should hear such bigotry, misogyny, and narrow-minded idiocy as fell from his lips.

Here we've got an older, white, conservative male talking about how he hates multiculturalism. How he wants to go back to segregationist tactics designed to keep uneducated people (i.e., blacks) from voting. How people who couldn't spell or speak English are the ones who voted Obama into the White House.

Have you looked at any of the demographics, Uncle Tom? You are factually inaccurate. College graduates constituted a huge portion of Obama supporters. For anyone who supports Tancredo and others of his ilk, you might want to think long and hard about why you are doing so; unless you are also a white, conservative male, or a MILF, they are not your friend and they are not your advocate. Let’s go over that again. He wants to put segregationist tactics into place. Yes, teabaggers…this is what you are following. This is what you—YOU—are advocating if you are supporting them.

By the way, if we focused more on education, they way our President is trying to do, perhaps the illiteracy rates in our country would drop. There are plenty of people who can't read because they don't have access to safe schools and a good education. That doesn't mean that they can't listen to the news and learn about things that way. His condescending, patronizing tone is an affront to all of us—or it should be.

One of the speakers today was Judge Roy Moore. This was the guy who was removed from his position as the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court because he refused to remove the monument of the ten commandments he had erected at the state judicial building. Moore said the monument "reflects the sovereignty of God over the affairs of men" and "acknowledge[s] God’s overruling power over the affairs of men." He did not feel that this violated the separation of church and state, and when the deadline for removing the monument came and went, they yanked him from the Court.

So now in addition to needing to be a white, conservative male or a white, conservative MILF, you must also ignore the Constitution (despite your strident call to follow it in other matters) and acknowledge that God rules the affairs of men, although that Constitution for which you profess such undying love explicitly says that that is not the case.

We're not a theocracy, folks. You know that, right?

There were several breakout sessions today (believe me, if I were there, I think I would have been finding a way to break out), with topics that included:

• "Why Christians must engage"
• "How to do Voter Registration Drives and Where to Find Conservative Votes"
• "Women in Politics" [They allow that? I thought we were supposed to keep our mouths shut and look pretty. Like a pretty version of Margaret Thatcher.]
• "5 Easy Fixes to the High Cost of Mass Immigration" [Tancredo's solution is immediate deportation of all of them.]
• "Defeating Liberalism via the Primary Process"
• and oddly enough, "Emergency Preparedness" [What sort of emergency? Heart attack? Bioterrorist attack? Nuclear bomb? Black man in the White House?...D'OH!]

They'll wind up tonight's festivities with a "tea party discussion" and another movie: "Generation Zero: The Inconceivable Truth."

Did I mention that there was no booze at these events? Gahhhh! I was telling a friend today that I would have liked to have seen them have this convention in Las Vegas. Vegas corrupts everyone. I'm picturing these matronly Midwestern women shooting craps, jiggling those die like…um, never mind…yelling, "C'mon baby, Mama needs a seven!" and staid, repressed Texas milquetoasts stuffing dollar bills into the G-string of a past-her-prime downtown pole dancer.

That would have been fun. But we wouldn't want a hangover to lessen our enjoyment of the 9 am lecture, "Correlations between the current Administration and Marxist Dictators of Latin America." Subtle. After that, a panel discussion, "Where the Tea Party Movement Goes from Here."

I recommend Vegas. I think they all need to cut loose a little bit.