Remember the “angry, racist Tea Party?”
For months, that was the line pushed by Democrats, the NAACP and much of the mainstream media.
Funny, though: The Tea Party-inspired wave that produced historic Republican wins also revealed a substantial diversity in the movement.
* Two African-Americans — Tim Scott from South Carolina and Allen West from Florida — won election to the House of Representatives, the first black Republicans to serve there in eight years.
In a victory showing how far his state has come, Scott’s road to Congress included a GOP runoff win over the son of the late Strom Thurmond — once the face of Jim Crow racial intolerance.
West, a 22-year Army veteran, was strongly embraced by the Tea Party early on, a move that helped propel him to a win over an incumbent Democrat.
* Another Tea Party favorite from South Carolina, Nikki Haley, was one of four GOP women to win governors races. She also joins fellow Republican Bobby Jindal of Louisiana as the nation’s only Indian-American governors.
* A movement smeared as anti-immigrant also produced America’s first Latina governor in New Mexico’s Susana Martinez; Nevada’s first Latino governor, in Brian Sandoval; Texas Rep.-elect Francisco “Quico” Canseco and, yes, the breakout Tea Party superstar of the campaign — Florida’s Sen.-elect Marco Rubio, a son of Cuban exiles.
Sure doesn’t seem like an “angry, racist” movement to us.