they demanded that the car be pulled. now they are saying, well there are some racist elements somewhere, somebody in the tea party has got to be a racist. it s a nonissue, the naacp is an arm of the democratic party and they know how dangerous the tea party is in terms of democrat candidates. they are going to pay dearly in the polls in november, the tea party movement is a beautiful patriotic movement and people on the left are trying desperately to silence and staoeufl the tea party movement and it s not going to work megyn it s going to backfire. megyn: it s interesting to hear you say it s going to backfire. you had jesse jackson come out and al sharpton tried to dial it back and lower the rhetoric. jesse jackson said the focus on the tea party is a diversion and sharpton came out and said, look, you know i m not mad that they are rallying i m mad that they are not rallying. it seems like they may sense some danger in going after the tea party too much, rob. i don t think it s
the tea party movement is now embroiled in a brewing controversy after the naacp the country s old civil rights organization accused the movement of racism. we will have a heated debate on the subject in the next hour. standby for that. let s look at the tea party s track record so far this year. joining us is our cnn political analyst gloria borger. thank you for joining us. sure. how successful as the tea party movement been so far? very successful, wolf. more successful than many folks thought. look at the folks backed by the tea party. nobody had heard of marco rubio or nikki haley or mike lee of utah who beat an incumbent senator. these were not established primaries, and then sarah palin and the tea party came along and endorsed them and they won the republican primaries. what about the republicans at large, has there been a shift toward the tea party movement?
seeing over the past year, there is the conservative anger and there s the frustration at washington, d.c., the frustration at the republican establishment for not being fiscally strong enough, not having fiscal restraint. and that s what we saw today with bob bennett. that s very interesting because there is talk, mark, that a lot of people who are moderate, more moderate republicans may be being moved out of office or pushed out, they believe, by some members of the gop. they believe the gop is moving really far to the right. is bob bennett one of those people who have been affected by this? he certainly has been drummed out of the party. you know, don, we talk a lot about the tea party movement. we are trying to understand how powerful the tea party movement is. in this case in utah the tea party movement was actually very strong. what happened in utah was not all the republicans in the state deciding whether bob bennett should be or should not be on the ballot in november. it w
been seeing over the past year there is the conservative anger and the frustration at washington, d.c., the frustration at the republican establishment for not being fiscally strong enough, not having fiscal restraint. that is what we saw with bob bennett. that is very interesting because there is talk, mark, that a lot of people who are moderate, more moderate republicans may be being moved out of office or pushed out, they believe, by some members of the gop. they believe the gop is moving really far to the right. is bob bennett one of those people who have been affected by this? he certainly has been drummed out of the party. you know, don, we talk a lot about the tea party movement. we are trying to understand how powerful the tea party movement is. in this case in utah the tea party movement was very strong. what happened in utah was not all the republicans in the state deciding whether bob bennett should be or should not be on the ballot. it was the state convention.
anniversary. part of it is some of the kind of rhetoric we ve heard sarah palin say that her supporters shouldn t relax or retreat, they should reload. greta: a very alaskan-type term one we don t use in the lower 48. she was to the talking about people getting guns and attacking someone. there has been this intense rhetoric. and there are some fringes, i guess of the tea party movement people who talk of revolution and things like that i think is more of an effort to try to sort of pretar the tea party movement with the label of being violent. when nothing in fact has happened. greta: which is also dangerous. it is. greta: is also wrong. the violence is wrong. provoking violence is wrong. and using our fears from past events is wrong too.