Michigan Militia plans ‘open carry’ gun tea party to ‘take the stigma out of the word militia.’

By Lee Fang This Saturday, on April 10, the Michigan Militia plans to host a tea party “open carry” gun rally. The Militia, which is a successor to the violent anti-government Michigan Militias of the mid-’90s, has come under criticism since the FBI raids of the Hutaree, a Michigan-based Christian militia that had planned to murder police officers. The Michigan Militia cooperated with the FBI to arrest the Hutaree and claimed that although they “had occasional contacts with the Hutaree militia,” they “had never trained with them.” Mike Lackomar, a spokesman for the militia, defended the planned “open carry” rally and again tried to distance himself from the Hutaree:

“This event primarily tries to take the stigma out of the word ‘militia,’ and provide information on what we are and who we are,” Lackomar said. “It lets people meet us and see what we’re all about.” [...] “I want it to be perfectly clear,” Lackomar said. “(The Hutaree) are not us, and we are not them, and we did not agree with their philosophy.”

However, according to their own website, the Michigan Militia boasts of being joined by their “friends” in the Hutaree shortly before leaving their training session to eat fajitas back in 2007. In a photo gallery published by the Michigan Militia in 2008 (now deleted), they posted pictures of the Hutaree with the caption: “Like ghosts through the woods, The Hutaree close on their objective.” The tea parties, anti-government militia groups, and far right elements of the Republican Party are slowly merging. Gun right advocates are planning rallies on the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing around the country, with even Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) slated to speak at one of the events.

Huckabee: A ‘Big Tent’ Will ‘Kill The Conservative Movement’

By Ben Armbruster

In the wake of two devastating losses in the 2006 and 2008 elections, and the intra-party dispute surrounding the special election last month in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, many Republican Party leaders have argued for a “big tent” GOP in order to regain power. “We accept moderates in our party and we want moderates in our party,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said recently. And RNC chair Michael Steele even tried to extend the “big tent” metaphor into hip-hop lingo:

STEELE: I look at it this way. The four of us are, let’s say for the sake of this example, all wearing a hat that says “GOP.” All right? You wear your hat one way. You like to wear it, you know, kind of cocked to the left, you know, because that’s cool out West. In the Midwest, you guys like to wear it a little bit to the right. In the South, you guys like to wear the brim straight ahead. Now, the Northeast, I wear my hat backwards, you know, because that’s how we roll in the Northeast. But what do you recognize? We all are wearing the hat that says “GOP” because that’s what we believe. That’s who we are.

However, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee strongly disagrees. At a fundraiser in Canada last weekend, Huckabee stated definitively that the “big tent” will “kill the conservative movement“:

HUCKABEE: One of the things that concerns me is that in the United States there’s a real talk of “maybe we need to have this big tent and make sure that we just accommodate every view.” That’s what will kill the conservative movement. Conservatives are conservatives because they have convictions and convictions aren’t preferences.

Watch it:

It seems that Huckabee has changed his tune. He said recently that “it’s fine” to have moderates in the GOP, saying that “[t]he tent could be big, but it shouldn’t have holes in the ceiling and let the rain come through.” And in another interview also endorsing a “big tent” GOP, Huckabee seemed to reject a more conservative third party. “The conservative movement is really the only home for Republicans,” he said.

However, voters may be leaning toward Huckabee’s most recent desire for a right-wing Republican Party. According to a new Rasmussen poll, in a three-way generic ballot test, the “Tea Party” candidate beat the Republican 23 percent to 18 percent.

M.C.L. comment: Oh please GOP and right wing movement stick to this plan by running off sane people from the Republican party heck I might send 20 bucks to our local tea party folks if they can screw Mike Cox out of the governorship.

The Tea Party's Takeover of the GOP

By Stephanie Mencimer

You have to hand it to Michele Bachmann: She has succeeded in turning the GOP into one big Tea Party.

This past weekend, the Minnesota Republican went on Fox News and called on viewers to show up on the Capitol lawn on Thursday at noon for a press conference and a last ditch attempt to kill health care reform. The gathering that resulted was marked by the now-routine extremism of the Tea Party conservatives. "I'm a bitter gun owner who votes," read one sign. Others questioned President Obama’s citizenship, portrayed him as Sambo, or called him a traitor. One said, "Obama takes his orders from the Rothschilds." Old ladies wore red T-shirts decrying "Obamao care." The crowd also took spirited swipes at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. At one point someone yelled, "Put down your Botox and show yourself."

But what was most noteworthy was that the entire House Republican leadership was also in attendance—and their rhetoric was just as over-the-top as some of the protesters. House Minority Leader John Boehner declared the health care bill the "greatest threat to freedom I have seen." In essence, Congressional Republicans were merging with a movement that gives open expression to racist and anti-Semitic sentiments.

The crowd was several thousand strong, many bused in by Americans for Prosperity, a group created by the owners of Koch Industries, a huge oil and gas conglomerate. The AFP chapter from New Jersey reportedly sent 29 buses. Four AFP buses came from Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and more came from Richmond and North Carolina. Lots of people in the crowd carried AFP signs or stickers warning "Hands off my health care."

During the rally, all the prominent House GOP legislators wanted a shot at the mike, including Boehner, whip Eric Cantor of Virginia, Roy Blunt of Missouri, presidential aspirant Mike Pence of Indiana, and what seemed like the entire Texas GOP delegation. There were so many Republicans blow-bagging that dozens of hungry patriots were heading for the exit long before the speeches ended. But aside from Bachmann herself, only South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson won overwhelming adoration from the crowd—he could barely get a word in over the rousing cheers of "Thanks Joe!"

Most attendees looked old enough to have already experienced government-run health care themselves. (Walking to the Hill from Union Station along with people headed to the rally, I could hear some of them wheezing and joking that their aging spouses should have rented Segways to get them to the event.) This demographic was reflected in the celebrity lineup apparently arranged by Bachmann, who said that her "good friend," the actor Jon Voight, was the first person to call her at home after her Fox appearance.

Voight and John Ratzenberger—better known as "Cliff from Cheers"—shared the same message: The Democrats’ health care plan will send the country down the path to European socialism. The crowd erupted with chants of "Nazis! Nazis!" Ratzenberger insisted that the Democrats’ philosophy doesn’t come from America but from "overseas," where, he said, quoting Churchill, they embrace the idea of the "equal sharing of misery." Voight warned darkly that President Obama wants to use the health care bill to create national socialism, and that Americans would end up like Europeans where health care "leads to many deaths." Standing in front of them was a protestor who carried an enormous sign that read, "National Socialist Health Care—Dachau, Germany 1945" over a large photo of a stack of naked bodies piled up at a Nazi death camp.

But Voight and Ratzenberger's speeches were mild stuff compared with that of talk show host Mark Levin. After ranting about the various things "they" want to take over and ruin—everything from Social Security to the banking system to the auto industry—Levin proclaimed: "Now they want to control health care. They want to play God and decide who lives and who dies." The crowd responded with cheers of "Impeach Obama!" (At about this time, President Obama was making a surprise appearance at the White House press briefing to praise the American Medical Association and the AARP for endorsing the health care bill.)

Many people I spoke with said they came because of "the babies," and their belief that the health care bill will fund elective abortions. Tony Perkins, the head of the evangelical group the Family Research Council riled up the crowd with claims that the bill is "another bailout of the abortion industry with your money" and that Planned Parenthood had helped draft the measure.

Aside from the abortion foes, most protesters seemed to be focused not so much on the specifics of the bill, but on its price tag. "The deficit is the thing I’m most against," said Dr. Jo Allen Jones, an ER doctor from West Virginia who showed up in her white coat and proudly pointed out the blood spots on it. She had heard about the march from Glenn Beck and Americans for Prosperity. She was standing with two other doctors from Alabama, also in white coats, who were concerned about future reimbursement rates and the lack of malpractice lawsuit relief in the bill.

Sharon Johnson, from Williamstown, New Jersey, had driven down in the morning simply because she had seen Bachmann on Fox. She came with her wheelchair-bound friend, a retired teacher who now suffers from a rare degenerative nerve disorder much like Parkinson’s. The trip, Johnson said, was a bit of a sacrifice because she had stayed up late watching the World Series, and "after a half a case of beer" she wasn’t feeling so great this morning.

She’s an Army veteran and gets her health care from the Veterans Administration. "I guess you could say I'm on the public option!" she said with a laugh. But she’d had some experience with a government-run health care system in the Army, where she was unable to get an operation on her shoulder for a year. She's afraid these types of problems will expand if the reform bill passes. Her friend, who had trouble speaking because of her disease, was attending simply because she was afraid she would lose her health care under the bill. She, too, has government-provided health care, via the state of New Jersey.

These sorts of contradictions were apparent everywhere. But one thing about the rally proved sparklingly clear: Michele Bachmann is a major star. When she stepped up to the podium on the Capitol steps, the crowd went wild. It wasn’t too hard to imagine the event as a warm up for the 2010 presidential election, where Bachmann might prove a far more viable candidate than Sarah Palin. The rally confirmed her primacy as a leading voice of the Republican Party—a party that, with this protest, has fully embraced the conservative movement's most extreme elements.

Protester holds up a copy of the ‘U.S.S. Constitution’ to prove that Congress can’t regulate health care.

By Amanda Terkel

One of the newest right-wing memes is that federal government doesn’t have the constitutional authority to enact health care reform. At a town hall protest in San Diego on Saturday, one attendee tried to make one of these “tenther” arguments by holding up a copy of the “U.S.S. Constitution’:

Right here. I got a book here called the U.S.S. Constitution. I’m sure everybody’s seen this before. And you know what? I’ve this book three times now, and I’ve referenced it dozens of times and I can’t find one little paragraph in here that says the government has the right to take over our health care.

Watch it:

TP’s Ian Millhiser — who has also read and referenced the Constitution a few times — notes that the Constitution gives Congress the power “‘to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,’ thus empowering the federal government to levy taxes and leverage these revenues to benefit the American people.” (HT: TP reader Kevin)