Behind the right's attack on Obama

Don't be fooled by the grass-roots image of the tea partyers and the '10thers.'

Tim Rutten
LA Times

September 16, 2009

When members of the House voted Tuesday to rebuke South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson for the insult he shouted at President Obama during his address last week, they may have thought they were drawing a line that would halt the spread of the town hall/tea party ethos across the country.

Think again. The fact is that the right-wing anti-Obama movement in the U.S. these days is overpopulated with nuts, fundamentalists and paranoids who won't be easily stopped by a few congressional reprimands.

Wilson, for example, isn't just a loudmouth with impulse-control issues. He's one of those Southern lawmakers with links to the sinister neo-Confederate movement and, as a state legislator, was one of the die-hards who opposed removing the Confederate battle flag from atop the South Carolina statehouse. He's also an unrepentant supporter of Obama's extreme critics. When he spoke on the House floor Monday, Wilson praised the "patriots" who turned the town halls into shouting matches and the tea party demonstrators who gathered in Washington last weekend to oppose "a government takeover" of healthcare. (Among the 179 representatives who voted against rebuking Wilson -- and circulated a letter on his behalf -- was Iowa's Steve King, who recently alleged that Obama was excluding "white men" from his initiatives.)

Meanwhile, the tea party spokesman, former radio talk show host Mark Williams -- what else could he be? -- was on CNN Monday and was asked by anchor Anderson Cooper about his personal blog in which Obama is described as "an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and racist in chief." Is that really what Williams thinks of the president, an incredulous Cooper asked. "He's certainly acting like it," Williams replied. "Until he embraces the whole country, what else can I conclude?"

(More here.)