What I learned about the gop this week. It's scary.

I learned the gop is not above using fear and bigotry in order to win elections, and the media enables them. How Ken Mehlman’s ‘open secret’ stayed hidden

The suspicion, rather than direct knowledge that Mehlman is gay, has been alive in elite media and political circles for more than a half decade.In 2005, Tapper penned a GQ profile of Mike Rogers, a gay activist willing to out political figures who support policies infringing upon gay rights. Rogers has long targeted Mehlman, the former head of the Republican National Committee who also ran President Bush's re-election campaign.

So while the republicans and the media were focusing on Rep. Barney Frank" (D. MA) sexuality they gave Mark Foley, Ken Melhman and God knows who else a free pass.

The half-open closet in which Mark Foley spent his life was a recipe for disaster, say those few who tried to intervene. Investigating Foley's pre-teen seduction by a priest, the "ladies' man" mask he wore in Palm Beach society, and his love-hate relationship with the gay community, the authors uncover the ambition, delusion, and hypocrisy that corroded both the politician and his party.

The gop knows it can count on the segment of voters who care more about keeping gays from getting married than their self interest.

Back in 2004, gay marriage was still a very effective wedge issue that the Republican Party used to generate high voter turnout in a tough election year, despite Vice President Dick Cheney's public disagreement with the strategy.

Note Dick Cheney has a daughter who is gay. That should have been our first clue. And don't forget about Jeff Gannon Gucket Gate. All the anti gay hysteria generated by the Bush administration was just as hypocritical as avowed segregationist Strom Thrumond

Thurmond sired a daughter in 1925 with a black house servant named Essie "Tunch" Butler, with whom he reputedly had an extended relationship. Though "Black Baby of Professional Racist" would seem to sail over the man-bites-dog bar of what is news, the story has never really gotten traction. The particulars of this family saga simply do not fit into the "redemption narrative" Americans tend to impose on our more regrettable bygones: Better that ol' Strom "transformed" from the Negro-baiting Dixiecrat presidential candidate of 1948 to One of the First Southern Senators To Hire a Black Aide in 1971.

I learned there is more than a whiff of hypocrisy within the gop. For example, the republican wedge issue/talking point/spin du jour is "anti big government", although Bush and Dick created the largest government in United States history. Republicans claim they are pro-life yet they are anti health care, anti public education and anti welfare. Republicans claim to be pro jobs, yet they are anti Union, and they certainly forget the millions of jobs that were outsourced to Mexico, China and India under republican rule. Republicans claim to be anti spending unless it's for all war all the time, spreading FreeDumb all over the world, and it's a republican administration doing the spending.

Speaking of spreading FreeDumb and using fear and bigotry enabled by the media to win elections, look at the Glen Beck/Sarah Palin rally yesterday. The fact a reported 350,000 people attended should be enough to skeer the bejeezus out of America. One thing is clear, the people who attended the rally can be counted on to vote. The fact Glen Beck and Sarah Palin got them there is also scary. Once again poor republicans are being manipulated by rich republicans into protesting against their self interest.

The Koch brothers must be laughing all the way to the bank knowing that working Americans are aiding and abetting their selfish interests.

The gop uses Fox News and talk radio to keep the dumb bigots in line. It's time to boycott Fox News aka Radio Rwanda because they are using the public airways to promote fear and bigotry.

What we’re watching is a calculated campaign to demonize blacks, Mexicans, and gays and convince a plurality of economically-depressed white voters that they are under imminent legal and perhaps even physical attack by a conspiracy of leftist nonwhites. They’re telling these people that their government is illegitimate and criminal and unironically urging secession and revolution.

I learned the Tea Party is not a loosely organized band of anti-tax libertarian-leaning political newcomers who are fed up with Washington. They are a fully funded, highly organized, group of anti Obama, media enabled, right wing bigots who want to take the country backwards. Just imagine the gop infused Tea Party in control of the Supreme Court, the Congress, the Justice Department, education, transportation, energy policy, and the economy.

So, now that we know the gop, enabled by the media uses fear and bigotry to to win elections, what can we do about it?