Teabaggers Get Down In Nashville

After Markos Moulitsas chased racist chickenhawk Tom Tancredo off MSNBC awhile back, I imagined Tom T would be too embarrassed to ever show his face in public-- not counting Fox, of course-- again. When I woke up at 5 this morning and fumbled for the remote and switched from HGTV to CNN, what did I see on my screen but... Tom Tancredo? Yecchhh.

It was a story on the teabaggers, and he was all they could find as an opening speaker for their convention in Nashville last night.



His goal was pure Republican Party strategy: illegitimize Barack Obama and undermine him in the eyes of an already frenzied batch of 600 paranoid self-defined victims, almost all of whom are already totally brainwashed by Limbaugh and Beck.

The former congressman from Colorado and 2008 Republican presidential candidate blasted President Obama, saying "people who could not even spell the word 'vote,' or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama."

...Tancredo's speech received polite applause among the 600 attendees at the convention.
"So the race for America is on right now. The president and his left-wing allies in Congress are going to look at every opportunity to destroy the Constitution before we have a chance to save it. So put your running shoes on. Because I'll tell you, I've heard we need a revolution. My friends, we already had it. We lost. I mean, what happened to us in that last election was a revolution," said Tancredo, discussing the 2008 presidential contest.

Tancredo also slammed that election's Republican presidential nominee, saying "thank God John McCain lost the election."

But teabaggery is more than a way for racists, bigots, haters, malcontent rightists and paranoids to vent and sound like they're part of the mainstream, or at least the Glenn Beck mainstream. It's also the secular way to shear the right-wing sheep. Why should all that money from those suckers be siphoned off by religionist charlatans all the time? The secular hucksters on the far right fringes want in too. This morning's Washington Post pointed out that the rip-off aspects brought unwanted controversy and that some "high-profile speakers and activist groups have canceled their appearances in protest of alleged profiteering by the convention organizers... Attendees have paid $549 a ticket (plus hotel and transportation) to gather for three days at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center, which critics say is out of reach for many activists. Some of the proceeds will cover former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's reported $100,000 fee for Saturday's keynote address."

Alan Keyes' Cruise For Liberty insanity and the spin-off Restoring Liberty conference last month were perfect examples: screaming "impeachment" for bucks. The Post article mentioned that "outside the convention hall, entrepreneurs sold souvenirs: sterling silver tea bag necklaces ($89.99), bags of 'Freedom Coffee' ($9) and T-shirts emblazoned with a bald eagle ($20) [and] House Republican Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) said Thursday that there is 'no difference' in the beliefs of Republicans and tea party activists." The GOP plans to retake Congress with that and a platform of phasing out Social Security and Medicare. The Obama Democrats have been pretty bad this last year, but in case anyone had forgotten, the GOP makes them look almost good.