Debbie Gunnoe, a tea party organizer from Navarre, Fla., who was in the House gallery for Ryan’s comments called on him to apologize for “making the generalization that a few rogue people are an example of the rest of the” tea party movement and “for calling all tea party people across the United States ‘tea baggers,’ which is a denigrating word with negative connotations. It’s as bad as calling a black person the N-word.”
Politico has a story in which Tea Party supporters denounce the racist and homophobic slurs that some of the their members hurled over the weekend. But they also go a step further and demand apologies from Democrats for making a deal out of it.
I think this tidbit illustrates why they won’t get very far disassociating themselves:
Debbie Gunnoe, a tea party organizer from Navarre, Fla., who was in the House gallery for Ryan’s comments called on [Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio)] to apologize for “making the generalization that a few rogue people are an example of the rest of the” tea party movement and “for calling all tea party people across the United States ‘tea baggers,’ which is a denigrating word with negative connotations. It’s as bad as calling a black person the N-word.”
Is it really?