Tea Partiers are big on the Constitution, except when they want to amend it or merely exempt an entire class of people from it. Earlier this week, Jamil Smith posted an e-mail sent by Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips, exhorting his audience to vote Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison out of office because he is a Muslim:
There are a lot of liberals who need to be retired this year, but there are few I can think of more deserving than Keith Ellison. Ellison is one of the most radical members of congress. He has a ZERO rating from the American Conservative Union. He is the only Muslim member of congress. He supports the Counsel for American Islamic Relations, HAMAS and has helped congress send millions of tax dollars to terrorists in Gaza.
It's totally legitimate for a conservative group to want to oust a liberal politician. Not so legitimate is the argument made above, that Ellison's religion should have something to do with it. The idea that Ellison supports terrorism is nonsense, and he is one of two Muslims in Congress, alongside Rep. Andre Carson. In an interview with Chris Moody, Phillips explains he doesn't think Muslims should be legally banned from running for office -- because as long as there's merely a defacto religious test for public office it's totally OK -- and also wouldn't even commit to supporting a hypothetical conservative candidate who happened to be Muslim. His rationale:
“A majority of Tea Party members, I suspect, are not fans of Islam,” Phillips said. “I, personally have a real problem with Islam. With Islam, you have a religion that says kill the Jews, kill the infidels. It bothers me when a religion says kill the infidels. It bothers me a lot more when I am the infidel.”
The fact that Ellison has served in Congress for years without actually killing anyone does not appear to have occurred to Phillips or prompted him to rethink whether or not all Muslims do in fact think all non-Muslims should be killed.
