The College Fix

Some of the most patriotic folks in the nation have been thrown under the bus by an academic who claims he has proof they’re a bunch of racist extremists.

Christopher Parker, a political scientist at the University of Washington and co-author of the book “Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America,” claims data finds Tea Party supporters tend to be more racist, sexist and homophobic than so-called moderate conservatives.

“When I looked at it empirically, I found that people who supported the tea party tended to be more racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and anti-Obama,” Parker told The Washington Post recently. “There’s just this empirical connection between support for the tea party and antagonistic views toward quote-unquote marginalized groups, or, if you prefer, toward quote-unquote not real Americans.”

Parker said he came to his conclusion by surveys taken across the nation, as well as by comparing what he contends are Tea Party websites to National Review Online, which he says represents less extreme and less reactionary conservative opinion.

Essentially he argues Americans who staunchly defend the Constitution, demand undocumented workers obey the law, want the government to stay out of their lives and businesses and bank accounts and email inboxes, believe in the sanctity of marriage, and really dislike President Obama – they tend to be racist, sexist homophobes.

Parker added:

So it’s not just that we’re seeing results like 76 percent of tea partiers want to see Obama fail. We also ask if people think Obama is destroying the country. We asked this question of all self-identified conservatives. If you look at all conservatives, 35 percent believe that. If you look at tea party conservatives and non-tea party conservatives, only six percent of non-tea party conservatives believe that vs. 71 percent of tea party conservatives.

So to draw this together, the reason people should believe us is we have disparate data sources that collapse on the same answer. It’s that these people are not the traditional, mainstream conventional conservatives. If you look at tea party conservatives, or as we call them in the book, reactionary conservatives, they don’t want change at all. They want to go back in time.

If anyone sounds like they’re a viewpoint intolerant extremist, it’s Parker and his typical academic leftism.

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