You’ll notice our story on Tennessee gubernatorial candidate Ron Ramsey saying that Islam may not be entitled to 1st Amendment religious freedom protections because it’s a cult. It occurs to me that this is another example of the fierce competition for the crazy is races around the country — but apparently some races more than others. Ramsey is currently running in third place in the GOP governor’s primary in Tennessee. And the guy who’s running in second is Rep. Zach Wamp, who just last week threatened that Tennessee might secede from the United States over Health Care Reform.
The GOP strategy for the final 2010 election is coming into focus: Senate Republicans are asking for hearings on alleged Obama DOJ bias against white people.
Remember, these are the charges brought by J. Christian Adams, one of the activist political hires brought in at the DOJ by the folks who ran the US Attorney firings. The Bush purge of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, the Breitbart/Sherrod smear. It all comes together. And it’s the story of the next three months.
Tom Tancredo has already gotten into a shouting match on the radio with Colorado GOP chairman Dick Wadhams following Tancredo’s entry into the governor’s race.
A TPM reader from out West weighs in on one particular wrinkle to the Tancredo campaign: its potential indirect effects on Latinos:
I’m glad someone is analyzing the Tancredo campaign more deeply than just the superficial thought that Tancredo’s entry into the race is good for the Dems either because TT will split the Republican vote and/or his presence in the race will mobilize Hispanic voters. In a state with a Latino population of 20% or more (as you point out) the dynamics of a Tancredo bid are actually quite toxic for Latinos in particular.
If your weekend was spent offline, you can check out all our coverage of Netroots Nation right here.
Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, who is running for governor, addresses the novel question of whether the Constitution protects the practice of Islam:
Now, you could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, way of life, cult whatever you want to call it. …
Now, you know, I’m all about freedom of religion. I value the First Amendment as much as I value the Second Amendment as much as I value the Tenth Amendment and on and on and on. But you cross the line when they try to start bringing Sharia Law here to the state of Tennessee — to the United States. We live under our Constitution and they live under our Constitution.
Today’s my first day back at TPM. And when I woke up this morning, I saw (h/t) this piece in the American Spectator opening a new front in the attack on Shirley Sherrod. It turns out, says Jeffrey Lord, whose bio lists him as “former Reagan White House political director”, that for all our thought that Sherrod was a victim of a smear, she’s actually a terrible liar after all. Her story about a relative being lynched by a white sheriff almost 70 years ago, Lord reveals, is a terrible lie. Read More
Ordinarily an event like former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) jumping into the Colorado governor’s race would be cause for celebration at TPM HQ. Not just because it makes for a good story in which The Crazy comes into full bloom, although, yes, that’s a self-interested part of it. But we also subscribe to the theory that The Crazy is diminished by its exposure to the sunlight and the cleansing effect of public scrutiny and mockery.
Here’s the thing though. The virulent nativism Tancredo represents scares me, and as we all know, there is a deep and wide stream of that kind of nativism that runs through American history and persists today. The thought of him as governor of a state, especially one with a 20% Hispanic population, is too sobering for me to fully relish the potential Crazy a Tancredo campaign might yield.
TPM has obtained a copy of an invitation to an upcoming RNC fundraiser in California headlined by Michael Steele — and Andrew Breitbart.
Tea Party candidate for U.S. Senate in Colorado turns into tea party pooper: “Will you tell those dumbasses at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I’m on the camera?”