Despite all the hulabaloo in the media about the racist and anti-gay epithets Tea Party protesters allegedly hurled at African-American Congressmen and the unhappy Barney Frank, we could find only one corroborated report of such slurs; a POLITICO reporter overheard someone in the crowd yelled “faggot” at Frank.

And yet some in the MSM continue to peddle this nonsense about the movement being racist and anti-gay.

Yes, we do have that one example of a random person in the crowd, yelling a hateful slur.  But, when a Congressman uses a sexual slur her fellow partisans (in the Democratic Party and in the MSM) regularly use to describe these protesters, the same people who can’t contain their outrage at alleged racist epithets remain silent.

Note the contrast?  A citizen yells a hateful slur and the media get their panties all in a bundle.  An elected Democratic Congressman uses a sexual slur to deride citizens protesting big government and they yawn.  If it’s bad enough (and it is bad) when one citizen uses hateful rhetoric, wouldn’t it then be worse that it’s become commonplace for Democratic officials and their allies in the MSM and blogosphere to use a deliberately derogatory term to describe the most important and energetic political movement to emerge in the Obama era?

Routinely, I read comments either caught in our spam filter or which appear with our posts where readers describe the Tea Party movement a racist and/or anti-gay.  Yet, I wonder how many of those folks have ever actually been to a Tea Party.   These critics are not describing the Tea Parties that are, but conservatives as they see them.  They’re describing an image in their own mind, not the protests taking place in town squares and public plazas across our country–and certain to increase in the coming days, weeks and months.

No matter what we say or do, it’s unlikely to change the narrow views of these prejudiced critics of our movement.  The reality of the situation won’t change the perception conjured up by their imagination.  They want Tea Parties to be racist and anti-gay, so racist and anti-gay they shall be.

Perhaps, to prove them wrong, we should bear signs proclaiming that we’re “Lesbians for Liberty” or “Homos for Freedom” the next time we attend Tea Parties to see how our fellow protesters react.  Wait, our readers did just that:

And they weren’t taunted or asked to leave, indeed, they were made welcome, quite welcome.  Their experience kind of defeats the narrative.

ADDENDUM:  Glenn Reynolds has a great roundup on the determination of Democrats to brand the Tea Parties as racist–despite a paucity of evidence.

According to the most recent CBS poll (a survey which skews left):  Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s favorability rating stands at 11%. Now, only 37% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion, but then again, 36% haven’t heard enough of the San Francisco Congressman.

In short, of those Americans who have an opinion about Mrs. Pelosi, three times as many have a negative view as those who have a positive view of the woman who pushed Obamacare through the House.

Now, I know then-Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich was not particularly popular in the mid-1990s when he served, but then he did push through the Contract with America, a series of proposals so popular that Democrat Bill Clinton campaigned on several in his 1996 re-election campaign, even touting a few in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination that summer.

(H/t:  Gateway Pundit.)

No matter what national affairs writers for Yahoo! may say, the GOP’s real dilemma is not  appearing “to be a respectable party capable of governing while also providing political shelter for the highly motivated, though vocally disruptive, protest wing of the party associated with the Tea Party movement,”* it’s how to go about repealing an unpopular piece of legislation with a number of popular and several beneficial components.

Should they just repeal the whole thing and start over (as the American people wanted) or once it’s become established law, repeal only those most egregious provisions (the better part of the bill) and leave in place the popular and beneficial reforms?

While driving my Dad to the airport today (he was in town for a meeting), I had a brainstorm:  the GOP should pursue a policy of “Repeal and Reform.”  As soon as Speaker Boehner takes the gavel next January, his fellows in the majority should introduce a bill to repeal all but a few provisions of the recently enacted health care bill and include in the package a number of health care reforms that Republicans have long advocated (and have put forward in the current debate, only to have the MSM and Democrats pretend they don’t exist).

Personally, I believe Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan should do it, but I am secretly hoping he’ll make a last minute decision to run for the Senate.  If he could win in 2008 with 64% in a district Obama carried by 51%, in a Republican year, he could win in a state where John Kerry barely mustered a majority in 2004.

That digression aside, it seems I’m not the only one to favor such a plan of repeal and reform.  When I got home, I caught David Freddoso’s piece in the Washington Examiner: ‘Repeal’ is Not Enough:

When President Obama signs his signature health care bill into law a few hours from now, he will be trading a dysfunctional and excessively costly health insurance system that is crippling the economy for an even more dysfunctional and even more costly system that goes further to encourage rent-seeking by the drug and insurance industries that wrote and backed it. (more…)

Hm:

“When there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so you know what your government is doing.”

Stalinization of Health Care Act of 2010:
Passed House, 21 Mar 2010, 10:49PM EDT
Signed by President Obama, 23 Mar 2010, 1:33PM EDT
Time “you the public” had “to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so you know what your government is doing”: Five Days 1 day, 14 Hours, 44 Minutes

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

With all the hoopla in Washington this past week, many folks aren’t even aware that there’s a special election coming up in just a few weeks in Florida. Robert Wexler, thankfully, retired last year, leaving the state’s 19th Congressional District seat open.

The Democrat (in this 2-to-1 D-over-R registered district), Ted Deutch (I’ll pronounce that any way I please, thank you) is heavily favored. You know, kind of like that one lady was.

But…

Lots of old folks down there, and they’re all getting the shaft from Obamacare (of which Deutch is a big fan).

What’s more, Deutch was one of only two state Senators to vote last week against a law that recinds the policy of asking potential adoptive parents if they own firearms. The law passed the house unanimously, and the Florida State Senate 38-2. Apparently he doesn’t consider the Second Amendment as important as socializing our entire health care industry.

Oh, but there’s this: He also attempted to kill in committee a bill that would have held liable those who kill or injure a pregnant woman for the death of her unborn child. No exception, I suppose, if that woman might have planned to put the child up for adoption by parents who at one point or another owned a gun.

The election is April 13th, and Deutch’s opponent is Edward Lynch. You can donate to his campaign here.

Well, It is Done.

President Obama signed his Stalinization of Health Care Act of 2010 to thunderous applause this morning, and in so doing, subjugated our Nation to third-world socialist state status for the ensuing future (unless, of course, we take it back).

Happy Dependence Day.

Oh, and hope you don’t have any problems that ever need cutting edge medical technology. Byron York lines out just one of many medical device companies who will, thanks to this historic legislation, basically be run out of business. Yay, progress!

Zoll is the nation’s leading manufacturer of heart defibrillators, which save thousands of heart attack victims each year
…
“We believe that the tax will cost us somewhere between $5 million and $10 million a year,” says Richard Packer, Zoll’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Our profit in 2009 was $9.5 million.”

Fortunately, however, thanks to Obamacare, we’ll all have equal access to the defibrillators that will not exist in the future.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

I’m beginning my first road trip for work under the Era of Obamacare this morning.  I start in Charlotte, head to Baltimore, then off again to spend the night and most of Wednesday in Pittsburgh.   And yes, as Dan mentions below, PatriotPartner and I are headed to Los Angeles on Thursday for a long weekend.

How will this new Era of Socialism Utopia treat me as I travel the TSA-mandated skies of America?  Will people be nicer now that they have a new bloated entitlement program that will bankrupt this and successive generations?  I haven’t seen it yet.  The TSA agents and US Airways ticket agents had the same scowl on their faces as they did last week.

But haven’t they heard that we are in the Era of Sunshine, Unicorns and Lollipops?  I mean first Obama raised his hands and single-handedly stopped the 15 foot Chilean Tsunami from ravaging Hawai’i.  He did tell us the seas would fall after he was elected!

And now everyone is walking around with the statisfaction that we all have healthcare coverage.  Nevermind that our taxes will go up significantly.  Nevermind that the cost of healthcare will continue to rise.  Nevermind that the premiums that the middle class pays for their health insurance will also go up.  And nevermind that those who are covered by Domestic Partner benefits will be the first to be dropped when the Individual Mandate is enforced.

Nah, what is really important is that the Obama Presidency was saved!

Funny, the Americans walking around the Charlotte, NC airport this morning look as worried and stressed and anxious as they did last week.

I guess it really isn’t funny at all.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Please join Bruce and me at a brunch for blog readers this coming Sunday March 28th at 1 PM at the home of one of our readers. 

Please drop me an e-mail by this coming Friday if you’d like to attend.

In the past 24 hours, the mood among my fellow conservatives seems to alternate between hope and despair, with some feeling that the Democrats’ overreach these past 14 months will lead to a reinvigorated conservative movement, able to recapture the congressional majority and repeal burdensome regulation and shut down meddlesome federal programs while others insist that Obamacare, like entitlements before it, are here to stay.

I tend to belong to the latter camp, (yet admit to feeling part of the former at times).  I looking at polls which show a remarkable consistency:  the American people don’t want bigger government.  Indeed, Obama seemed to recognize this his successful bid for the White House when he promised a “net spending cut.”

According to a CNN survey this past weekend, 56% of Americans believe the health care bill creates “too much government involvement in the nation’s health care system.” Last September, Gallup found that a near identical percentage of Americans, 57%, believe “the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to businesses and individuals“. Only 38% thought it should do more.

After all the effort Democrats put into passing this bill–and by the barest of majorities–Democrats may well have expended all their political capital and be unable to push new programs through. Obama still feels he needs to sell the program to the American people.  (Isn’t that kind of link a used car salesman coming to your house and continuing his spiel about the quality of the car he sold you, as if his words alone will overcome the problems with the vehicle you were all but forced to buy?)

Just take a gander at the CNN poll. 62% of Americans think their health care bills will go up under the new plan. 70% say it will increase the deficit. 47% think their families will be worse off, while only 19% think they’ll be better off. And this despite Obama’s incessant shilling of the program, overwhelmingly favorable media coverage and tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars in TV ads by allied special interests. (more…)

One reason I have so much fun lampooning Barney Frank is that he is almost the perfect caricature of the self-important politician, saying one thing while behaving in the exact opposite reaction. If the media didn’t feel they needed hold this unhappy Democrat in such awe, they too might see through his bluster.

To be sure, he’s a smart guy who often tosses out some clever quips. And is certainly more interesting than the great majority of his colleagues. He doesn’t mince his words, something which might, in the ordinary course of events, be a good thing, but when that failure to mince becomes occasion to insult, then, well, he’s gone too far.

And Barney often, very often indeed, goes too far, deriding the intelligence of his Republican colleagues, misrepresenting (often in malicious terms) their ideas, accusing them of all manner of prejudice. And then, when one or two conservatives behaves badly, he runs for the cameras and tells us how horrible, no good and very bad Republicans are.

So, I find it particularly rich when reporters uses the mean-spirited Massachusetts Democrat as a primary source, indeed, quoting him in their headline on protesters’ boorish behavior, as did Politico’s Marin Coogan & Meredith Shiner in their article, Barney Frank: ‘Mass hysteria’ on Capitol Hill.

Note how they cover a protester ejected by Capitol Police from the House gallery after yelling:

Frank was visibly angry with his GOP colleagues, whom he believed goaded the protester who slipped inside the House chamber.

“Did you guys see the Republicans encouraging the disruption?” Frank left the House floor to tell about 15 reporters. “These clowns are out there encouraging violation of the law and making the job of the guys up there harder. It’s really disgraceful.”

The hyperpartisan Democrat is their only source for the notion that his Republican colleagues goaded the protester. Said protester should have been ejected. He behaved badly. Yet, Barney doesn’t respond in a civil tone, instead, calling his Republican colleagues “clowns”! Wonder if he’ll be asking Democrats colleagues to “differentiate” themselves from him.

One Politico reporter did overhear someone in the crowd yelling “faggot” when Barney walked by–this being the only corroborated (that I could find) case of a hateful epithet being hurled by a tea party protester in Sunday’s demonstrations. It’s sad that someone would use such a term. (more…)

Why is it that the news media suddenly becomes fascinated with civil discourse when conservatives are protesting a liberal Administration?  Just caught this story on Yahoo!’s front page under the headline, Heckler’s Outburst Reveals Dilemma:  Rep. Randy Neugebauer’s stinging words during the health vote debate may say a lot about the GOP.

But the “Baby killer!” furor highlights a far more serious, long-term political dilemma for the Republicans: how to appear to be a respectable party capable of governing while also providing political shelter for the highly motivated, though vocally disruptive, protest wing of the party associated with the Tea Party movement. While many commentators are forecasting trouble ahead for Democrats identified with the health care bill, the GOP faces some major issues of its own.

Just look at the past weekend: Thousands of Tea Party protesters descended on Washington in an attempt to “kill the bill.” It was an impressive turnout for a quickly organized protest—but coverage of the event soon was dominated by reports that some demonstrators had hurled racial and homophobic epithets at Democratic lawmakers as they entered the Capitol.

Emphasis added.  Wonder where Yahoo! News’ national affairs writer Brett Michael Dykes was during the Bush Era when the Number Two Senate Democrat compared U.S. troops to the Soviets, Nazis and Pol Pot.  Or, more recently, when Barney Frank accused Republicans of having a “psychological disorder.”  Or when left-wing protesters marched down streets in major cities, bearing posters comparing then-President George W. Bush to Hitler?

Did Dykes find it a political dilemma for Democrats to appear as a respectable party capable of governing while also providing political shelter for the highly motivated, though vocally disruptive, protest wing of the party associated with the anti-war movement?  The problem, Mr. Dykes, isn’t the tea party movement, the problem is just how you identify it:  coverage was dominated by wat you call reports, most of them unsubstantiated. (more…)