Conservatidiot of the Day: Tom Tancredo

Day Three of the GOP's "Sonia Sotomayor is a big fat racist!" smear campaign: former Congressman Tom Tancredo -- who boosted his political profile by fanning the ignorant flames of hatred towards all brown-hued people -- has compared Sotomayor's association with the pro-immigrant group National Council of La Raza to being a member of the Ku Klux Klan. "If you belong to an organization called La Raza, in this case... which is from my point of of view any way... nothing more than a ... Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses," Tancredo began to say in an appearance on CNN today, stuttering since there was just way too much ignorance to come out of his mouth at once. "If you belong to something like that in a way that's going to convince me and a lot of other people that it's got nothing to do with race. Even though the logo of La Raza is "All for the race. Nothing for the rest." What does that tell you?"

The former Congressman did get something right in that sentence. La Raza's motto is "All for the race. Nothing else." But he's imbecilic to assume that La Raza's motto is racist against whites, blacks, Asians, or any other ethnic group. La Raza focuses explicitly on expanding the rights of Latinos in the United States. It supports relaxing many strict immigration laws, ending unjust discrimination against Latinos, and is one of the largest Latino advocacy groups in the country. It holds corporate sponsorships with many multibillion dollar corporations, including Citigroup, and works with Latinos in multiple inner city neighborhoods to overcome prejudice and economic hardship to enhance their communities.

What La Raza isn't is a group which parades around a burning cross at night, lynching white people because they aren't as superior as the Latino race. La Raza doesn't advocate for laws which would mandate separate but equal facilities for Latinos and other races, with Latinos having far more adequate facilities than the other "inferior" ethnic groups. And La Raza doesn't go around obstructing the voting rights of other ethnic groups... all of which the KKK did in its heyday.

Of course, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that Tom Tancredo has come out to attack a Latino advocacy group, comparing it to one of the most hate-filled, vitriolic racial groups to ever exist in this nation's history. After all, this is a man who insinuated that all illegal immigrants who come to the United States are closet terrorists waiting to bomb our malls and schools, and has endorsed a little group called the Minute Men which go around brutally beating and intimidating anyone who "looks like" an illegal immigrant. And by that, anyone who has brown skin and speaks in a Spanish-sounding accent is the subject of their brutal, racist attacks.

So, for the third day in a row, a conservatidiot is playing the "racist card" in an attempt to deflect their own racism. And, for the third day in a row, I find myself saddened that this moron is given a public forum to spew such horrendous nonsense. I guess the lesson we can all learn from this is, no matter how racist an ethically corrupt, white GOP congressman is, a proud minority who speaks of her own experiences and associates with groups which aim to enhance the lives of those minorities are far more racist and evil. This marks the next chapter in the white supremacist movement in the United States: All proud minorities are racist against white people, and white people are now the victims.

How ingenius...

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0509/Tancredo_La_Raza_is_Latino_KKK.html