Tea party leaders, complaining about NAACP "racist" charge, call Obama's policies "socialist"

Yesterday, I discussed how if you object to the NAACP playing the race card, the tea partiers aren't your friends. As if to provide a real world example, Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler of the so-called "Tea Party Patriots" offer "On being labeled as 'racist'" (link):

A clear pattern of behavior has emerged over the last 16 months. According to liberals, if you disagree with their thinking, and if you disagree with the Obama administration, you are not only wrong, you are a "racist."... ...At its most simple, [the NAACP resolution] is a direct attack on the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans... ...It seems that anyone who disagrees with the far left, socialist policies of Barack Obama and the current administration is subject to the heavy hand of the race card.

1. When claiming to be called a false name, it's generally not a good idea to call others false names. While some in the Obama orbit are indeed far-left, his policies don't really fit that description. And, those policies certainly aren't "socialist". If Obama is socialist, one wonders what those who want him to move further left are, SuperSocialists?

2. The First Amendment claim is questionable since the NAACP isn't the government. They're certainly at least in favor with the Obama administration - Michelle Obama spoke before they voted on their resolution - but they aren't the government.

They also make this outrageous claim:

According to recent polling, more than 49 million people are active members of the tea party movement (Winston Group, April 1, 2010).

You can view that poll here, and the word "active" doesn't appear in it; the question asked was, "Do you consider yourself a part of the tea party movement?" The idea that 49 million people would be active members of their movement is more than a bit ludicrous. Note also that the poll was taken February 22-23 which was a month before the infamous healthcare vote where teapartiers allegedly spat on and called representatives names (in the case of Barney Frank that's been confirmed, in the other cases it hasn't). Due to those incidents as well as their obvious failure, the tea parties have been on the decline since then, and then in May and June the Koch family and Dick Armey of Freedomworks distanced themselves from the movement.

Note also the smear in the very name of their group, implying that those who aren't members of their movement aren't "Patriots".

ADDED: Note that the first link in this post refers to "counter-productive activities such as endlessly repeating the smears [and] endlessly denying they're racists" which they're doing in this case. They don't have the abilities to handle things in more effective ways but instead just reinforce the "teapartiers = racists" meme. No doubt their opponents are beyond themselves with joy that the teapartiers keep bringing it up; it allows those like ThinkProgress to make videos like the one at thinkprogress.org/2010/07/14/tea-party-racism. Despite the fact that at least one of those shown on the video is probably a plant and despite the fact that the last frame (with the t-shirt) was a failed attempt at irony (the back says "I'm a racist because I support the Constitution" or similar), the teapartiers won't be able to do anything about it.

If you want to see those like ThinkProgress discredited, the tea partiers are just getting in your way.

7/15/10 UPDATE: One of the ThinkProgress clips was from 2006; they've posted a new version of the video without that clip and some in the teaparties point out that there are still problems with other segments on the clip:
legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2010/07/
shocked-think-progress-misleading-anti.html
The teapartiers did have a short-term impact on ThinkProgress, but the former group won't remember it and the latter group will just keep doing what they've been doing.