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.
Mr Tancredo’s speech was followed by music from Lisa Mei Norton, who sang among other songs one entitled Where Were You Born?, a reference to the right-wing “birther” movement which believes that Mr Obama is not a natural-born US citizen.
One featured speaker, a “Patriot Pastor” named Rick Scarborough, told The Times that he was not against legal immigrants “but God has ordained that you are not a nation if you don’t have borders”. Standing next to a pile of books entitled Liberalism Kills Kids, he added: “If this country becomes 30 per cent Hispanic we will no longer be America. We don’t want to become like the UK where in places you have Sharia.
“English is our language. We are Americans. We’re not Hispanic-Americans, or African-Americans — we are Americans.”
He then invoked Winston Churchill when he referred to the inauguration of Mr Obama. “A year ago we thought we had lost the war. A year later they are reeling. I believe God has once again given America an opportunity for a new beginning. Even in the darkest days of the blitzkrieg, Churchill said ‘no surrender’.”
Sarah Palin, the Republican’s 2008 vice-presidential nominee and former Alaskan Governor, is due to speak tonight. She is attending in part because it enhances her anti-Washington, outsider image — and because these are the type of people who will do anything for her.
Thomas Chanteloupe, a 45-year-old wearing a Sarah Palin badge, said without prompting: “I’m the same age as Sarah Palin, we left high school at the same time, we’re both big Reagan fans, we both have three children, we’re both the middle children, and both our fathers were high-school teachers and sports coaches.”
That’s Palin fever for you.
