Some of the things that Tea Party politicians and candidates say is pretty outrageous. Recently candidates or commentators aligned with the Tea Party have called for succession, mutiny, and armed revolt. They routinely call Obama a Muslim, and a Senate Candidate in Wyoming called Hillary Clinton the “anti-Christ.” They have convinced themselves that liberals are destroying the nation, and they must do something to stop it. They’re angry at the state of affairs, and desperate to do something.
So how angry is the Tea Party?
They are so angry that a Tea Party member in Mississippi thought it would be a good idea to take pictures of the ailing wife of a political opponent. Mark Mayfield, one of the founding members of the Tea Party in Mississippi was apparently so worked up about trying to beat current Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, the he conspired with two other men to sneak in to a nursing home and take pictures of Cochran’s wife, who is suffering from dementia and has been hospitalized for 14 years. They apparently were going to use the photos to try to attack Senator Cochran, in an effort to help the Tea Party backed candidate, state Senator Chris McDaniel. (There is no evidence that McDaniel had anything to do with the nauseating and lame brained scheme.) Mississippi is very conservative, and the winner of the Republican Primary is most likely to win the general election.
How angry and outraged must a person be to do something like that to try to win a political campaign? How worked up must someone be to think that something like that is a good idea?
Members of the Tea Party have been saying, since they first emerged from some subterranean nether regions of conservatism, that this nation is in crisis and will be lost if someone doesn’t act. Apparently some people believe this rhetoric. The Tea Party in Mississippi opposed Cochran because he has, on a few occasions, worked with Democrats, and because he has not supported some of the more extreme policies or legislation proposed by Tea Party candidates in Congress. So, in the minds of some conservatives in Mississippi, Cochran was as bad as, if not worse than, the Democrats. And he had to be stopped, and stopped at all costs. So Mr. Mayfield and his stupid friends took it upon themselves to take action. They were so feverish and worked up, so convinced that the safety and future of the nation depended upon them, that they were willing to do anything, including take pictures of an ill woman. (How they didn’t think that would back fire is beyond me.)
Unfortunately we’ll never know how truly worked up Mr. Mayfield was because, after he was arrested and charged with exploiting a vulnerable adult, he committed suicide. The Mississippi Tea Party issued a statement saying Mayfield had “a patriot’s soul.”
Mr. Mayfield’s actions may have been extreme, but they are merely the end result of a steady stream of angry, vituperative, and over the top statements by Tea Party conservatives. His actions were not an outlier, but the tip of the iceberg, revealing the anger beneath.