The Tea Party in the South - A Reprise of Segregationist Politics

I get accused by former Republican colleagues of being "angry" or a "single issue voter" because I am gay and the GOP is anti-gay rather than admit that I rightly criticize the ugliness of what the Republican Party (especially the Tea Party faction) has become: a coven of religious extremists and white supremacists.  These twin pillars of the GOP base typically overlap and for an example here in Virginia look no farther than The Family Foundation ("TFF") which in addition to seeking to impose a Christofascist theocracy on all Virginians likewise supports every GOP effort to disenfranchise minority voters.  One doesn't have to scratch the surface very much to see that many of TFF's adherents are from a long line of racists and segregationists.  The phenomenon is not unique to Virginia as an article in the New York Times notes.  It is pervasive across the South in particular and is a common thread in the Tea Party.  Here are excerpts:

The Tea Party is on a roll across the South, having mounted major primary challenges in Texas, Mississippi and South Carolina, and knocked out Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia.

The movement’s success, with its dangerous froth of anti-Washington posturing and barely concealed racial animus, raises an important question for Southern voters: Will they remember their history well enough to reject the siren song of nativism and populism that has won over the region so often before?

We often think of the typical segregationist politician of yore as a genteel member of the white upper crust. But the more common mode was the fiery populist. Names like Thomas E. Watson of Georgia, “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman of South Carolina and James K. Vardaman and Theodore G. Bilbo of Mississippi may be obscure outside the South, but for most anyone brought up here, they loom large.

In the early 20th century, these men rose on an agrarian revolt against Big Business and government corruption. They used that energy, in turn, to disenfranchise and segregate blacks, whose loyalty to the pro-business Republican Party made them targets of these racist reformers. 

Their activities spawned a second wave of Southern Democratic populists, who defied federal court orders and civil rights legislation during the 1960s, even as more moderate politicians were moving on. 

It’s hard not to hear echoes of those eras today. Tea Party candidates have targeted federal taxes and spending, while attacking Chamber of Commerce interests and the leadership of the Republican Party. Racism has been replaced with nativism in their demands for immigration restrictions, but the animosity toward the “other” is the same.

And there remains a whiff of the ancient fumes of bitter-end resistance: Chris McDaniel, a state senator who took Senator Thad Cochran into a runoff in Mississippi, still refuses to accept the validity of the election. Mr. McDaniel had all the bona fides of an old-time demagogue. He was once a conservative radio talk show host who dabbled in ethnic innuendo. He made appearances before neo-Confederate organizations.

Education became their whipping boy. A century ago, the first wave of populist demagogues withheld funds for poor, segregated schools and tried to purge college faculties of nonbelievers. The second wave, citing “states’ rights,” threatened to shut schools rather than integrate and denounced federal aid to education as a sinister investment. In the Cochran-McDaniel race, you could hear that same strain in Tea Party criticisms of the federal government, of federal aid to education and of the “establishment.”

[W]e are faced with an open, and very unsettling question: Which way will the South go this time?

For gays it is crucial to remember that the Tea Party is 3-1 against gay rights and gay marriage.  The GOP as a whole are 2-1 against us.  The Tea Party is not only the enemy of racial minorities, but gays as well.