"Right Wing Rallies Around Tea Party After NAACP Condemns Movement For Harboring Racists"

[Clio the Leo]

Right Wing Rallies Around Tea Party After NAACP Condemns Movement For Harboring Racists

Conservative political groups and the NAACP have rarely been friendly. But their already cool relationship has taken a turn for the frosty in the past several days, as the NACCP took direct aim at the tea party movement at its national convention in Kansas City. Last night, delegates at the convention unanimously passed a resolution calling on the tea party movement to "repudiate the racist elements and activities" of its membership in the past.

The reaction from the right is as you'd imagine it.

Scattered incidents of bigotry at tea party rallies have been well documented over the last year, and even tea party leaders have admitted that racism -- among other nasty -isms and -obias -- can be found at tea party demonstrations. So to critics of the NAACP then, the argument essentially comes down this: tea party bigotry is tangential to the movement, not central to it.

NAACP president Benjamin Jealous agrees with that, and rejects the idea that the NAACP is taking on the ideals of all tea partiers.

"We do not think the tea party is a racist movement," Jealous told me Tuesday as the clock ticked down toward a vote on the resolution. "Our concern is that it tolerates racism and bigotry by its members."

"Either you make it clear that there's no room for racism in your party or you take full responsibility for racist things that have happened at your rallies," Jealous said.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/07/right-wing-rallies-around-tea-party-after-naacp-condemns-movement-for-harboring-racists.php

Exhibit A