THE TELEGRAPH: A conference designed to galvanise opposition to Barack Obama's "big government" agenda has hit controversy after racially-charged remarks by the opening speaker, a leading anti-immigration campaigner.
Tom Tancredo, who served for ten years as a Republican in Congress, said America's first black president was only elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country".
Such tests were used to prevent blacks from voting during segregation and were banned by the landmark civil rights legislation of 1964.
Speaking at the first National Tea Party convention, Mr Tancredo also denounced the "cult of multiculturalism". The 2008 election had "put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House ... Barack Hussein Obama," he said, using the president's Islamic middle name.
"This is our country," he told the audience. "Let's take it back." >>> Alex Spillius in Nashville | Friday, February 05, 2010
TIMES ONLINE: They will proudly boast of how they have galvanised ordinary Americans against runaway government spending, but a dark underbelly of xenophobia has been exposed at the first national gathering of the Tea Party movement.
Here in the vast Gaylord resort in Nashville, where 600 members of the conservative grassroots phenomenon that exploded in revolt against President Obama’s economic policies have gathered, it would be advisable not to wear a T-shirt declaring “I am an illegal immigrant”.
The anti-Government, anti-Establishment movement, which has splintered in the past week with many boycotting this gathering, has billed itself as a revolution born of the widespread disgust at Washington and the way that the nation’s politicians are bankrupting America’s future.
With its raucous protests it has undeniably become a political force that threatens to hand Democrats a disastrous midterm election night in November. Voter anger against spending and debt, of which the Tea Partiers are in the vanguard, played a significant role in the recent loss of the late Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat and could conceivably lead to Democrats losing the House and Senate.
Yet the speech that opened the Nashville event yesterday, an address greeted with whoops and cheers from the mainly white audience, reflects a movement that also appears to have a less attractive side to it.
Tom Tancredo, a former Republican congressman who ran for president in 2008 on an anti-illegal immigration platform, said of the voters who elected Mr Obama: “They could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English and they put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House — Barack Hussein Obama!”[.]
Decrying America’s multiculturalism, Mr Tancredo said that Republicans and Democrats had voted for a black man because they felt they had to. To a standing ovation, he shouted: “We really do have a culture to pass on to our children: it’s based on Judaeo-Christian values.”
“This is our country,” he declared. “Let’s take it back!” He added, to applause: “Cultures are not the same. Some are better. Ours is best!” The crowd, some wearing recently purchased T-shirts saying “Keep the change — I’ll keep my FREEDOM my GUNS and my MONEY”, loved it. >>> Tim Reid in Nashville | Saturday, February 06, 2010
