Or Glenn Beck for that matter? Rush Limbaugh? You're all but non-existent in the national media these days.
I think Republicans are trying to keep their already discredited radical white supremacist movements quiet for the time being, in public anyway. Of course they're still up to all the same anti-woman, anti-minority things in government, but in the press I see A LOT LESS from Sarah Palin or the Tea Party these days, day in day out. Sure, they pop up now and then, but they don't saturate the media like they used to. At first I was a little surprised, they seemed to think those movements were so critical to their success in 2010. But then I started to catch on to what they're up to.
I think that we should use every opportunity to highlight the already discredited extremist elements in the conservative movement in hopes that the press will pick these stories up and focus on them. If they want to keep their extremism quiet, I think they realize that the election is about winning over the so-called "moderates" at this point.
So, the Terry Jones story is a good start.
But I think that every time an already discredited and unpopular element like a Tea Partier or Palin or Beck or Limbaugh make an outrageous statement, we need to be on it.
In some ways, of course it would be great to just leave these already discredited people and movements in the dustbin of history, but all of their evil white supremacist nastiness has defined the debate for the past 4 years, and it makes no sense for it not to be in people's minds over the next 4 months. To let them get away with that kind of re-branding of the conservative movement would be a huge mistake.
So let's start feeding the media the stories on these people as they crop up. They're still out there saying their crazy stuff. It's just that conservative media and traditional media are trying to ignore it now that Romney is the candidate and the re-branding to win over more middle of the road voters has begun.
Let's not let them keep dragging out new white supremacist spokesmen every month or so just to have the same debates (Trump being the latest example to be discredited). Make them own the ones they've been using since 2008, the ones that are already discredited, the ones the public already knows are evil, racist scumbags.
That way, we're already way ahead in the debate before it even starts. I say we ignore the new crazies, to some degree, and focus on the old crazies the public already hates. We don't have time to take down every fresh new white supremacist face they throw up in the next 3 months. We need to try to keep them from dominating the media spotlight and keep it on the older already discredited rightwing voices.