Is the Tea Party's Opposition to Obama Really Motivated by Racism?

If Tea Partiers are against excessive spending and deficits, ask liberals like Bill Maher smugly, why didn't they protest against the White House budget when George W Bush was in the Oval Office?

The underlying assumption is of course that the protests can only be due to Obama's race and that the "Tea-Baggers" — along with other mainstream Americans — can consequently be nothing if not racist hypocrites (with Bill Maher in addition proving typically thin-skinned as he finds a term like "ObamaCare" beyond the pale, although, needless to say, he had no compunction using phrases, or with fellow liberals using phrases, like "Bush's war").

The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back

As is made clear by the following graph, which graced Sylvain Cypel's article on the front page of Le Monde, there is another explanation. A far simpler one, as it happens. The decisions of 2009 — whomever they were made by, of whatever party the leader was from, and whatever was the color of his (or her) skin — were simply the straw that broke the camel's back.

Had a Republican president — such as George W Bush or John McCain (had the Arizona senator won the 2008 election) – continued to push the deficit to new heights (especially to the astronomical ones reached, as it happened, by Barack Obama) — or to new depths, perhaps — the American people would likewise have formed Tea Parties.

Alternatively, had Barack Obama kept the debt to George W Bush's (admittedly — too — high) levels, Americans would have remained at home and not come out in droves in 2009, 2010, and 2011…

As leftists like Bill Maher can never understand, there are perfectly valid reasons for Americans to do what they do, or to refrain from acting, other than they're having to be hypocrites, liars, racists, nincompoops, and/or other types of treacherous beings…