Yahoo - 'Let Them Die' -- Latest Tea Party Slogan?

[OmahaBlueDog]

Did someone actually yell "Let them die!" at the CNN/Tea Party Express Republican Presidential Debate on Monday evening when Texas Congressman Ron Paul was asked the hypothetical question of whether or not he would treat an uninsured individual who needed immediate medical attention?

And were there shouts of encouragement and clapping and cheering as well? The answer to both questions is in the affirmative. Given that the debate was co-sponsored by the Tea Party Express and that the audience was predominantly filled with tea party members whose adherence to personal responsibility -- including the decision to have medical insurance -- is a core tenet of the movement, the outburst has focused the attention of the public on the seeming lack of compassion displayed by the tea party itself. Some might ask: Has the tea party gone from "Live Free Or Die" to "Let Them Die"?

The tea party has been beleaguered since it began to nationally organize in 2009 with the general perception that it was a bastion of conservative ethnocentric racist lunatic fringers. It also seemed to draw from the far right of the Republican Party that openly shouted racial slurs and hateful slogans about liberals, then-Sen. Barack Obama and their ties with socialism at McCain-Palin rallies in the ramp-up to the 2008 general election.

But since its acceptance as a legitimate political movement after the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives following the 2010 midterm elections, it has managed to keep much of the generalizing and stereotyping at bay, although the adherence to strict and intransigent political positioning during the summer debate over raising the debt ceiling (the tea party position was to get spending cuts only to combat the federal fiscal budgetary issues and not raise the debt ceiling at all) cost the movement some popularity points in the polls.

Read more at: http://news.yahoo.com/let-them-die-latest-tea-party-slogan-223700849.html