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Indeed, the "Beck Effect" is no doubt among the reasons for the rampant disconnect from reality exhibited by many Tea Partiers whose concern about government intrusion was nowhere to be found during the imposition of warrantless wiretapping or the suspension of the Constitutional right of habeas corpus during the Bush years. It's a disconnect that most recently was reflected by signs carried at various Town Hall meetings last summer which included: No socialized medicare!; one referencing Ronald Reagan urging Dig him up for 2010!; and yet another which read: We Want Less!
But it's not just Beck who is responsible for such breathtakingly absurd jewels of thought. In fact, there's been a fairly predictable effect on Tea Partiers stemming from months of having been spooked by any number of conspiracy theories branching out of charges that the President is a "Muslim," a "communist," a "socialist," an "illegal alien," and the "anti-Christ" promoted by other GOP supporters such as Rush Limbaugh; Fox News; talk radio's vast gaggle of B-level Limbaugh wannabes; and unhinged establishment Republicans such as Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, and GOP gadfly Sarah Palin. One is that it's hardened many Tea Partiers into the position that for the most part, the federal government should be viewed the same way U.S. forces view an al Qaeda fighter in Afghanistan -- as an enemy combatant. From that perspective it could be argued that followers of the Tea Party movement function in a manner similar to that of a Jihadist sleeper cell, in other words, as zealous operatives working to undermine the American government.
In fact, 67 percent of Republicans responding to a recent CNN poll presently believe that government "poses a threat" to the rights of citizens. Could this have any relationship to several recent incidents which have ominous anti-government overtones? They include this past September's murder of a census-taker in Clay County, Kentucky found partially hanged with the word "FED" inscribed across his chest (occurring not long after Rep. Bachmann's call for her constituents to refuse to participate the census); the deliberate flying of a plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas in February; and reports of how thin the Secret Service has been stretched resulting from the sheer volume of death threats against President Obama.
"Death to America"
For the Republicans, who for a time managed to adroitly utilize Middle Eastern boogey men to gain a stranglehold on both houses of Congress, the Oval Office and the popular support of Americans, there's a putrid irony in the fact that their obsequious embrace of the mindlessly anti-government Tea Party Patriots places the GOP well within the confines of a movement which shares the same goal as the "Islamo-fascists" against whom for nearly a decade these Republicans have argued waging war.
Who would argue that Osama Bin Laden himself doesn't share the Tea Party movement's wet dream of an American President experiencing his "Waterloo?" Is the concept of al Qaeda rooting right alongside Tea Party movement "ditto-heads" for the "failure" of an American Presidency at all unfathomable? As it's been said: "There are eight million ways to die." Pick your poison. Either way in the end it all boils down to Death to America!
Today, the boogey man foisted by the GOP upon its Tea Party base is the myth of a tyrannical federal government embodied by a president whose middle name just happens to be Hussein. Fitting, eh? Renders the dehumanization process that much easier. Some polls of Republicans seem to support this. For example, a Harris poll in March revealed that nearly a quarter of self-identified Republicans are convinced that Obama is the anti-Christ! The poll also showed that 67 percent of Republicans believe the president is a socialist, 57 percent consider him Muslim and 45 percent doubt he is an American citizen.
Simply put, the GOP's myopic obsession with destroying the Obama Administration could help hasten its own demise as long as it remain enraptured by an extremist anti-government movement simply because that group shares in the GOP's "destroy Obama" agenda. If that's the price Republicans are willing to pay, well, so be it. But there is yet another consequence that is more far-reaching: the weakening of America.
Disingenuous political posturing by "me-first" Republicans on issues as important as the nation's physical and financial health would seem certain to undermine America's forward progress and weaken the nation as a whole. Add to this mix, the stoking of hatred for the federal government by mainstream Republicans in the midst of an economic crisis characterized by soaring unemployment rates, and what you have before you are many of the ingredients needed to incite a storm among some of the less-enlightened elements of society. Yet, rather than join in efforts to reduce the potential for unrest, uncontrollable political expediency drives the GOP to ride out this storm for whatever advantage it has to offer.
Reading the "Tea Leaves"
It's plainly absurd, in fact, dangerously so, to reason that the "stand down" attitude by Tea Party allies within the Republican Party toward the incendiary, hateful rhetoric typically heard at Tea Party events can be justified by pointing to excesses having occurred during Bush's terms. For Republicans, merely offering juvenile retorts of "You guys did it too," to Democrat demands that GOP leaders tell their Tea Party allies to "knock it off" is simply irresponsible.
Instead, claims are being made by Tea Partiers and their Republican allies that the spitting, name calling and threats of violence that was reported during March's anti-health care reform demonstrations never occurred, but that if these acts did in fact happen, they were committed by either outside agitators embedded by Democrats or by a tiny minority of Tea Partiers "gone rogue" who are not representative of the movement as a whole.
According to Martin Knight, of the conservative, ergo GOP-leaning Red State blog:
"" first of all, the reported yelling and screaming of racial and homophobic epithets at John Lewis and Barney Frank very obviously didn't happen, and the bulk of these so-called attacks on Democrat offices and threatening calls are being coordinated from Washington DC - and most likely the people responsible have their day-jobs at the DNC."
Common sense and recent history dictate that neither claim could be true. Given their rhetoric, along with the still-incipient movement's underlying desire to be viewed as a legitimate political coalition instead of a babbling coterie of pitchfork carrying kooks, it's unreasonable to presume that Tea Partiers would permit outside agitators to disrupt and discredit their movement by engaging in such actions. Once it was confirmed that they were, in fact, outside agitators, police protection for them would most certainly have been necessary.
In fact, I'm aware of no reports of angry Tea Partiers displaying the courage to discourage spitters, shout down name-callers or physically remove them or attempt in any significant way to put a stop to the acts. Where was the outrage against either the "outsiders" or the movement's "rogue" element that one would expect to hear from its core supporters? Such copious silence is perhaps to be expected if those who committed these acts did so with the approval -- tacit or otherwise -- of Tea Partiers present when it occurred.
