Tea Party Protests Blacks Voting

Lots of Tea Partiers are outraged that Thad Cochran (R-Miss) appealed to African-Americans in winning his runoff election. The Tea Party had send "poll watchers" to try to intimidate blacks trying to vote. Echoing the Jim Crow era, Sarah Palin is now charging that blacks voted illegally.

Some Tea Partiers say blacks who voted for Cochran who don't intend to vote for him in the general election are criminals. There are vague suggestions that Mississippi law requires the state to compel blacks who voted in the runoff to vote for the Republican or risk prison.

There are no reports of blacks who voted being lynched. Yet. But the Tea Party candidate, Chris McDaniel, is a renown neo-Confederate with ties to the KKK.

It's a weird, and totally frightening, return to the Mississippi of 100 years ago.