If the Teabag Fits …

Here’s what Wingnut World is up in arms about today

A man who appears to be a National Public Radio senior executive, Ron Schiller, has been captured on camera savaging conservatives and the Tea Party movement.

“The current Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved in people’s personal lives and very fundamental Christian – I wouldn’t even call it Christian. It’s this weird evangelical kind of move,” declared Schiller, the head of NPR’s nonprofit foundation, who last week announced his departure for the Aspen Institute.

I had just read a piece at Salon by Steve Kornacki about how the Republican Party has morphed into a branch of evangelical fundamentalism. Kornacki compares a Republican presidential candidate forum held in Iowa recently with videos of similar functions held in Iowa 20 years ago. Of the recent event, Kornacki said,

The five candidates who did show up — Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Buddy Roemer, and Herman Cain — peppered their speeches with references to God and morality, denouncing abortion and gay marriage (and, of course, disparaging President Obama). As the Los Angeles Times put it, “the candidates essentially pledged the same thing, with a few variations in language and emphasis.” By now, we’re more than accustomed to national Republican politicians making these kinds of appeals to these kinds of audiences.

If you compare that with Republican presidential candidate rhetoric of just two decades ago, leading up to the 1988 elections, the difference is pronounced. And at that point, as most of us remember, the Christian Right already was a big factor in politics. But it hadn’t completely consumed the GOP. Back then, it still was possible for a major Republication politician to make campaign speeches and talk about stuff other than God, morality, abortion, etc.

As John Cole wrote, everything Ron Schiller said “should be met with a resounding -‘No shit.'”

Naturally, Ron Schiller was captured on a James O’Keefe video —

In a new video released Tuesday morning by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe, Schiller and Betsy Liley, NPR’s director of institutional giving, are seen meeting with two men who, unbeknownst to the NPR executives, are posing as members of a Muslim Brotherhood front group. The men, who identified themselves as Ibrahim Kasaam and Amir Malik from the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) Trust, met with Schiller and Liley at Café Milano, a well-known Georgetown restaurant, and explained their desire to give up to $5 million to NPR because, “the Zionist coverage is quite substantial elsewhere.”

— which makes me suspect Schiller isn’t exactly the brightest bulb in the lamp store. I’m sure the video was subjected to O’Keefe’s famously creative editing, but this has “entrapment” written all over it. But then, the teabaggers are upset over this —

On the tapes, Schiller wastes little time before attacking conservatives. The Republican Party, Schiller says, has been “hijacked by this group.” The man posing as Malik finishes the sentence by adding, “the radical, racist, Islamaphobic, Tea Party people.” Schiller agrees and intensifies the criticism, saying that the Tea Party people aren’t “just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”

All together now — ‘No shit.’ See also (and I still can’t believe I’m saying this) Charles Johnson.

And — Peter King, anyone? Steve Benen says the GOP is divided over Rep. King’s over-the-top-Islamophobic witch-hunt hearings, adding, “Just as aside, we now have House Republicans targeting abortion rights, access to health care, Muslim Americans, and domestic priorities, but the elusive GOP plan to create jobs is still nowhere to be seen.”