Tea Partyers Racists?

I can only shake my head as I read something like this:

Academics Dub Tea Partyers Racist.

Stuff like this is the reason the Social Sciences have struggled for recognition among their scientific peers for generations.  That they would proudly present such research at a conference totally boggles the mind.  Check out, for instance, the following:

But like Mr. Jacobson, Mr. Abramowitz also said they were more likely to harbor racial resentment, which he judged based on their answers to questions such as whether blacks could succeed as well as whites if they “would only try harder,” and whether they agreed with the statement that Irish, Italians and Jews overcame prejudice and “blacks should do the same without any special favors.”

Really?  Notice the second question.  How does that objectively measure one's racism?  The truth is it doesn't.  It compares blacks with other minorities who have faced and overcome prejudice and asks a person if blacks should be held to a different, arguably racist, standard which demands special treatment for them.  I would argue that the question is design to elicit the opposite of what it purports to measure if I weren't aware of the sophist thinking which motivated it.  It is based on the specious assumption that the black experience is somehow so much worse than that of any other minority in U.S., so much worse, that they must be accorded special status and favors.  To think otherwise is considered in modern academia to be automatically racist.  As a part American Indian myself, who was tossed out of Restaurants in the South in my youth under Jim Crow laws, I beg to differ.

So why do we end up with stuff like this passed off as "science?"  Follow the money.  These studies are financed, just like Climate studies.  By far the biggest provider of money is we, the taxpayers.  Something I learned in college is that basically applicants for research money have to promise an outcome.  The government doesn't hand that money for pure research for research's sake.  Generally bureaus are staffed by folks with left-wing leanings in their permanent positions, much like universities.  These folks determine who gets the research grants and they don't tend to give that money out to those who don't expect to get the approved result.

Clearly a lot of money went into this blatant effort to smear the current administration's political opponents.  Look for this stuff to surface in the coming months as it makes its way in the appropriate academic journals where it will be used by media pundits to smear both the Tea Party and, by extension, Republicans.  That is what happens when science becomes the servant of politics.