The real problem we are facing today is not that the Tea Party is part of the Republican Party, it’s that the Republican Party has been absorbed by the Tea Party. When the GOP lost the middle all it was left with was its fringe. And like all fringe groups Tea Partiers aren’t willing to compromise – on anything. (Hence, the term fringe)
The Tea Party has many problems. One of the biggest is that there is no clear leader. Many are vying for that title – Palin, Beck, Rush, Bachman, Perry, Freedomworks, militia groups, patriot organizations, etc. – but none have been crowned. What we’ve ended up with essentially is a mob. And mobs are dangerous since they’re fueled by rage rather than reason. The trajectory of a mob depends on the moment. Words count because what is said to a mob can alter its path.
Oh yeah, words matter.
It was supposed to be a routine campaign stop. In a poor section of Indianapolis, 40 years ago Friday, a largely black crowd had waited an hour to hear the presidential candidate speak. The candidate, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, had been warned not to go by the city’s police chief.
As his car entered the neighborhood, his police escort left him. Once there, he stood in the back of a flatbed truck. He turned to an aide and asked, “Do they know about Martin Luther King?”
They didn’t, and it was left to Kennedy to tell them that King had been shot and killed that night in Memphis, Tenn. The crowd gasped in horror.
Kennedy spoke of King’s dedication to “love and to justice between fellow human beings,” adding that “he died in the cause of that effort.”
And Kennedy sought to heal the racial wounds that were certain to follow by referring to the death of his own brother, President John F. Kennedy.
“For those of you who are black and are tempted to … be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling,” he said. “I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.”
Many other American cities burned after King was killed. But there was no fire in Indianapolis, which heard the words of Robert Kennedy.
Bobby Kennedy’s words changed the trajectory of Indianapolis that night.
Sadly, the Republican Leadership has chosen a different course.
The most amazing thing about that video is not what’s being said, but who is saying it. Elected officials are firing up a mob they have no control over and unleashing them on society – in the hope it will pay off in the voting booth. Russian Roulette style politics. They are fanning the flames and then feigning shock when their encouragement turns into action. They are no Bobby Kennedy. Actually, they have become the kids in the hallway egging on a “Fight!” while doing nothing to break it up. There is no leadership here – only followers of a mob which will turn on anyone (including Republicans) with the slightest provocation. Dr. Frankenstein, meet your monster.