It starts at the macro level, with a few things understood on the left about conservatives:
Pro-growth and low-tax policies are really code for loving rich people and hating poor people and pretty much everyone else. Balancing budgets and making entitlement programs sustainable really mean hating old people and young people and pretty much everyone else. Gathering to discuss the Constitution, limited government, or balanced budgets - as tea partyers do - is the equivalent of hating black people and pretty much everyone else.
These are not random thoughts from the fringe. They are mainstream Democratic beliefs.
Here's the demagogue in chief last spring attacking Rep. Paul Ryan's budget (Ryan was in the front row for the White House speech, at the invitation of President Obama): Ryan's plan would replace Medicare with a "voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry"; and "poor children," "children with autism," and "kids with disabilities" would be "left to fend for themselves" - all handily refuted later at factcheck.org.
Here's former demagogue in chief - now just citizen-demagogue - Jimmy Carter during the health-care-reform debate: "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man."
Too subtle? Here's Rep. Andre Carson at a Congressional Black Caucus jobs fair last month: "Some of them in Congress right now of this tea-party movement would love to see you and me . . . hanging on a tree."
The micro level was on display when Perry announced his candidacy for president last month. In addition to the governor's policies, his looks, his hair, his walk, his Texas education, his poor background, and his religion are all suspect.
Bill Keller of the New York Times worries about Perry's - and Michele Bachmann's - ties to "fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity."
