When you have absolutely no argument to advance, what's the easiest thing to do? Denounce your opponents as racist. Colbert King, who won a Pulitzer for "distinguished commentary" in 2003, really plumbs the depths with this column. The Tea Party crowd needn't be your particular cup of Earl Grey to spot the intellectual bankruptcy of this kind of thing:

Tea Party members, as with their forerunners who showed up at the University of Alabama and Central High School, behave as they do because they have been culturally conditioned to believe they are entitled to do whatever they want, and to whomever they want, because they are the "real Americans," while all who don't think or look like them are not…Hence, an explanation for the familiarity of faces: today's Tea Party adherents are George Wallace legacies. They, like Wallace's followers, smolder with anger. They fear they are being driven from their rightful place in America. They see the world through the eyes of the anti-civil rights alumni.