In a column last week in The Financial Times, Gary Silverman pointed out that Huckleberry Finn's father, Pap, sounded like a member of the Tea Party. (Thanks to Tom Belton for calling this to my attention.)
Pap is an unabashed racist and "whenever his liquor began to work, he most always went for the government." Pap is fearful, afraid the government will take away his meager belongings. When a free black man appears in his town, Pap flies into a rage. This black man is a professor from a midwestern state, has a mixed race background, dresses well and "could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything." Pap wants the man sold into slavery.
Living back before the Civil War, Pap would not have been a Republican, but times have changed. Frightened racists are today the backbone of the Tea Party, and that makes them central in Republican primaries. The Tea Party, unfortunately, is as American as apple pie.
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