Tea Party Vitriol Could Come Back to Bite the GOP

(March 24) -- Republican leaders have distanced themselves from the tea party activists who hurled racist and homophobic invective at lawmakers during the health care debate over the weekend. But the images could still hurt the GOP because it has courted the outraged conservatives of the loose tea party movement.

"It's very dangerous for the Republicans to be associated with hate rhetoric," Jane Elmes-Crahall, a professor at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania and an expert on political rhetoric, told AOL News. If political debate stays so heated, it will have a boomerang effect, driving people who see themselves as moderates away from the "us versus them" choice that conservatives have presented, she said. "It will turn on Republicans."

Paul Lindsay, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Republican leaders have made it clear that some of the actions of protesters are inexcusable. But the message from most of the rest of the protesters is one that jibes with Republican values, namely that "government is spending too much. It's taxing too much, and it's not producing the jobs it promised," he said.

The debate got more personal last weekend as House members worked through the landmark health care reform bill. Outside the Capitol, protesters spit on one African-American lawmaker and reportedly yelled racial and anti-gay epithets at others.

"You are going to see some fringe in every movement," said conservative activist John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council. "You can't control who comes to a rally. It's the nature of an open process."

Republicans won't be hurt as long as the invective is not coming from their leaders, Stemberger said. "Those hurling racial epithets, that's not the spirit or substance of where the leadership is at," he said.

David Gergen, a professor of public service at Harvard and director of the Center for Public Leadership, said the Republicans have a strong interest in clamping down on episodes that offend Americans. The outbursts this past weekend overshadowed what had been an effective message of opposition to a health care bill many people dislike.

"They've got a fighting issue for the fall. But they could easily blow it," he said.

The racist comments don't reflect Republicans' views any more than Democrats' attitudes are reflected by the gay rights mob that became verbally abusive with Christians in California over the issue of same-sex marriage, Stemberger said.

Elmes-Crahall said Republicans can't completely divorce themselves from the ugly rhetoric. Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, shouted "baby killer" during a speech by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who split with some fellow abortion opponents and voted for the bill. Republicans on an outside Capitol balcony held up "Kill the Bill" signs in an echo of the demonstrations, and were seen as egging on some of the less civil protesters.

"Their strategy needs to be 'That's not us,'" Elmes-Crahall said about Republicans.

Democrats learned that lesson the hard way when they lost a generation of older voters turned off by bitter protests over the Vietnam War and the Equal Rights Amendment, she said. The protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago also drove voters away, Gergen said.

Democrats like to point out that the tea party movement has already caused some splits within the Republican Party. And many Republicans facing primary challenges are moving to the right ideologically and spending their cash reserves, leaving them weaker for the pivotal November general election, when control of the House and Senate will be up for grabs.

"The tea party represents both a great hope and a great threat to the Republican Party," Stemberger said. If the loose movement becomes a political party running its own candidates, it could split the Republican vote the way Ross Perot did during the 1990s.

Republicans hope instead to harness the power of an engaged populist movement. "They are also helping us get our message out," Lindsay said.

But Gergen said the messages from the tea party and GOP could end up diverging over health care reform, which the activists want repealed. Republicans, he said, need to tell the public what they would replace it with so they don't come off as opposing the new health benefits for Americans, such as allowing young adults to extend coverage under their parents' insurance plans.

"If this becomes a fight between the tea party and Republicans, the Democrats will be happy to hold their coats and just watch," Gergen said.