Characterizing your political opponents as knuckle dragging, uneducated racists is as old a tactic as democracy itself, and fabricating facts to support the claim is likewise as old. The Tea Party shakes the socialist left to its boots, and short of a shooting war, they’ll do everything in their power to discredit it.
They won’t stop short of shooting, either,
and will use the government to shoot their
political opposition if given the opportunity.