The Limits Of Racism

Matt Welch puts out a plea:

[If] the Tea Party movement is significantly animated by racism or appeals to white racial resentment, we will certainly find out about it, and it will lose whatever popularity it has now, because racism in this country is genuinely unpopular. And by the same token, if the Great Klan Hunt fails to turn up more than just a fringe scattering of kooks, it may be time for some on the Air America left to begin considering that limited government sentiment is not automatically a form of sublimated racism.

My two cents is that if Glenn Beck emerges as the leader of this thing (and he could make an arguable claim right now), then there will be a hard cap on growth of its popularity, and a flourishing cottage industry of Beck-monitoring that will turn up daily outrages to feed the evil/stupid/insane/racist narrative. This will be great for Glenn Beck; for the rest of the new protest kids, maybe not so much.