Rep. Alan Grayson Says Tea Party Is Like KKK

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) has decided to stick by comments he made comparing the Tea Party to the Ku Klux Klan… telling objectors that if the “hood fits, wear it.”

The parallel made by Rep. Alan Grayson comes from an email fundraiser blast Friday, and the message had a pic of a burning cross. The campaign promotion highlights a chat between the Congressman and Rev. Al Sharpton about Tea Party racial rhetoric on MSNBC earlier.

The mail read in part:

“Ask yourself this: who else in American public life today is as honest and as blunt as this? Congressman Alan Grayson deserves your support, like no one else. He, and only he, is saying the things that you are thinking, and so much need to be said.”

Grayson has not shied away from strong descriptors in the past, and an early pro-Obamacare statement he made that the Republican alternative was for people to “die quickly” has caught on in left-wing political culture.

Matt Gorman of the National Republican Congressional Committee objected to Grayson’s comparison of the Tea Party to the KKK — both alongside Al Sharpton and again in the email. Gorman responded:

“There’s no excuse for the hateful words and imagery used by Congressman Grayson. House Democrats should swiftly and strongly condemn him and return the money he has raised for them. This hate-filled rhetoric has Americans fed up with Washington.”

However, Rep. Grayson refused to back down — instead providing a laundry list of examples on which he bases Tea Party racism claims, and to which he may not have been able to reference in his TV chat with Sharpton.

In the response, the Congressman begins:

“Regarding the image that the campaign circulated, members of the Tea Party have engaged in relentless racist attacks against our African-American President. For example, when the President visited my home of Orlando, Tea Party protesters shouted ‘Kenyan Go Home.’… Other examples include Tea Party chants of ‘Bye Bye, Blackbird,’ and Tea Party posters saying ‘Obama’s Plan: White Slavery,’ ‘Imam Obama Wants to Ban Pork’ and ‘The Zoo Has An African Lion, and the White House Has a Lyin’ African,’ as well as this repulsive one, depicting the President of the United States as an African witch doctor with bananas in his hair.”

Rep. Grayson continued:

“Tea Party members also have persisted in falsely characterizing the President as Kenyan and Muslim, despite all evidence, in order to disparage him. Tea Party members have circulated countless altered pictures depicting President Obama and the First Lady as monkeys. Tea Party members also called my fellow Member of Congress, civil rights hero John Lewis, a ‘n*gger,’ and Rep. Barney Frank a ‘f*ggot.’ ”

He concludes:

“More generally, the leader of the Texas Tea Party displayed a poster saying ‘Congress = Slave Owner, Taxpayer=N*ggar [sic].’ Tea Party Members of Congress have referred to Hispanics as ‘wetbacks,’ and having ‘cantaloupe-sized calves’ from picking fruit. Tea Party candidates, including my opponent in the last election, have endorsed forcing Hispanics to speak English. One could go on and on, because there is overwhelming evidence that the Tea Party is the home of bigotry and discrimination in America today, just as the KKK was for an earlier generation. If the hood fits, wear it.”

In the pic above of Rep. Alan Grayson’s Tea Party KKK email, the racist organization’s burning cross is used as the “T” in “Tea Party.”