Inge Marler, Arkansas Tea Party Leader, Makes Racist Joke At Event

[Alcibiades]

42. +1

I am not sure if they were trolls, or if some folks really felt that way. I think most people recognized these folks for who they were immediately: they are the George Wallace people.

The really asinine thing about the way this was handled in the media was that these people, who had voted GOP ever since the inception of the southern strategy, were treated as something "new" within the GOP by the media. Here's a photo I cannot post enough: it's Lester Maddox in 1965. Very little of the text of his sign would have to be changed for him to be a tea party supporter in 2012.

http://atlantatimemachine.com/misc/maddox.htm

The only real difference is that his sign is professionally lettered, the spelling is correct, and Maddox was, if anything, less hateful and irrational than tea party people today, which is saying quite a bit.