“Is there any other nation in the world where a leading politician can appear in public — without controversy — wearing the flag of a foreign country? It was a huge scandal on the Right when immigration reform marchers waved Mexican (along with American) flags in order to display cultural solidarity with Mexican immigrants who were being demonized and living in wretched conditions, as non-persons, in the U.S.; isn’t it obviously more significant when someone who recently wanted to be Vice President and is now the leader of this Fox-News-sponsored political movement appears at events in the U.S. wearing an Israeli flag melded to an American flag, as though the two nations are joined as one entity? Why should an American political leader be wearing an Israeli flag? All of this underscores both (a) the total incoherence of the ‘tea party movement’ and (b) how it is, at bottom, nothing more than a cynical marketing attempt to re-brand the right wing of the Republican Party under the exact same policies and principles which defined it for the last couple of decades.” (02/07/10)