Infiltrating the tea parties

News reports this week exposed an effort to sabotage the upcoming tea parties by infiltrating the assembled crowds of protesters, raising signs with misspellings and making racist or homophobic representations. These actions would serve to discredit the movement.

Fox anchor Megan Kelly commented to Bernard Goldberg that if the tea parties were actually peopled by racists and homophobes, why would it be necessary to import fake racists and fake homophobes to discredit them? This is a really good question and deserves some further exploration.

Contrary to the revised history of the United States so popular today, racism actually pre-dated the Nixon campaign of 1968. Institutional racism and loyal Democrats gave us famous civil rights pioneers such as Ross Barnett, Lester Maddox, and Orville Faubus. George Wallace and Strom Thurmond cut their political teeth as Democrats.

Even today some Democratic politicians struggle with racial sensitivity. Senator Reid noted that candidate Obama had conquered his Negro dialect and could employ it selectively to his political advantage. Senator Biden observed that candidate Obama was clean and articulate. Senator Boxer gave us one of the more racially tone-deaf moments in YouTube history. Chris Dodd praised Robert Byrd, characterizing him as the right man at any time in history, including the Civil war. Republicans can compete in racial insensitivity, but by no means, do they own it.

So, now I am forced to wonder; if all these racists and homophobes really did reside in the Republican party and have now set their allegiance aside, why are these activists so consumed? A Republican party that was already reeling is now further hampered as elements of the party splinter off. The racists and homophobes are now ensconced in a still politically impotent third party movement that further marginalizes them. And best of all, the bad element is not tainting the Democratic party by endorsing their candidates or voting for them.

I think I have the answer. None of this has to do with racists or homophobes or bad spellers. It has to do with the potentially credible force represented by the Tea Party movement. It has to do with the death of reliable voting constituencies, chronically indebted to either the Republican or Democratic parties.

In the same way that it is effective to paint your wife as an alcoholic, or your husband as an abuser during a divorce action, it is effective to denigrate innocent parties in a political movement. While the Republicans have kept a low profile about criticizing the Tea Party protesters, the election is coming. I expect to see them playing political paintball in the fall.

If the two parties cling to the same ideologies and policies that have sustained them, the third party movement will remain in the cross-hairs. The political mud fight won't be pretty. It never is.