Overshadowed by Tea Party Movement

[Lt_Ripley]

Overshadowed by Tea Party Movement, the Christian Right Scrambles to Claim It Isn't Racist

Tuesday 22 September 2009

by: Adele M. Stan | AlterNet

With increased overt racism being displayed at Tea Partier rallies, the Christian-right worries about a backlash

At the religious right's Values Voter Summit this weekend, some of the air seemed to have gone out of the balloon.

Gathering at the Omni Shoreham in Washington, 1,800 activists and their leaders seemed resigned to being subsumed by the broader Tea Party movement, or rendered irrelevant by it.

This year's conference, sponsored by the political affiliate of the Family Research Council, emphasized matters important to Tea Party leaders: freedom was linked with free enterprise; ominous were warnings offered about a march to socialism; global warming was said to be a good thing; and taxes were deemed to be too high and largely misappropriated.

But these messages did not receive nearly the degree of enthusiasm from attendees as the traditional religious right decrees against abortion and same-sex marriage. And despite efforts to tread carefully on issues of race, one of the biggest laugh lines of the conference was the racially charged parable told by Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., about the circumstances faced by Republicans in Congress, which he compared to having to play a ball thrown by a monkey.

Yet religious right leaders, who have long played to racial resentment, seem alarmed at how the overt racism of some of the Tea Partiers could harm their own movement - decades in the making - of politicized Christian evangelicals and conservative Catholics.

Even as some conference speakers sent coded racial messages, others cautioned the troops to extreme discipline on matters of race in their messaging, "lest we cast our movement," in the words of conference closer, the Rev. Harry Jackson, "... in a way that will cause people to think that we're something that we're not."

cont...

http://www.truthout.org/092209H

so even the religious right is backing off the message !

[AROCES]

When was being against higher Taxation ever was about race???? Only now since you want to use it to push your agenda of higher taxation since you ran out of argument.

A hail mary pass.

[eqgumby]

*snip*

Even as some conference speakers sent coded racial messages, others cautioned the troops to extreme discipline on matters of race in their messaging, "lest we cast our movement," in the words of conference closer, the Rev. Harry Jackson, "... in a way that will cause people to think that we're something that we're not."

[/b]

cont...

http://www.truthout.org/092209H

so even the religious right is backing off the message !

There goes those secret coded messages! So every time someone says "hamster" they really mean "*******"!

As in, "That Obama sure is a fine hamster, isn't he?".

Please, your agenda is showing.

Edited September 23, 2009 by Saru
Please do not bypass the profanity filter

[Startraveler]

There goes those secret coded messages! So every time someone says "hamster" they really mean "******"!

The problem is that we have a long (and, I thought, well-known) history in the U.S. of making racist associations between blacks and monkeys. So when you get something like this it raises eyebrows:

Former House Republican whip Roy Blunt was a featured speaker Friday afternoon at the Values Voter Summit, and he had a little parable to share with the crowd.

Conservatives shouldn't get too upset about the way liberals have taken over Washington since President Obama won election, he said. "We've got a reason to explain why we believe in the kind of America we believe in," Blunt said. "You know, you can't control everything there is in life that you'd like to control."

And then he told a little story about a group of British soldiers who found themselves posted in a quiet part of India in the late 19th century or the early 20th century. It was, Blunt said, a "very lush, very quiet, very peaceful, very uneventful part of India."

So the soldiers decided, without much better to do, that they'd build a golf course in the jungle. And then the story got weird.

Almost from the day the first ball was hit on this golf course something happened they didn't anticipate: monkeys would come running out of the jungle and then grab the golf balls. And if it was in the fairway, they might throw it in the rough. And if it was in the rough, they might throw it -- they might throw it back at you! And I can point to great and long detail about how many things they tried to eliminate the monkey problem, but they never got it done.

So finally for this golf course and this golf course only, they passed a rule and the rule was, you have to play the ball where the monkey throws it. And that is the rule in Washington all the time.

Yes, you read that right: the point of the story was that like British golfers, conservatives in Washington have to play the ball where the monkey throws it.

[Pseudo Intellectual]

As Frank J once said, “Wow! Conservatives haven’t been this riled up since the last time the president was a Democrat. It must be because he’s black.”