Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have tried to provoke a negative response when she led Democratic legislators through protesting conservatives the day health care was passed.
Democrats accuse the tea partyers of using racial epithets against black congress members, as they crossed the street to vote. Bachmann and other conservatives say Democrats are lying about the incident.
“Remember when Speaker Pelosi walked arm and arm in a civil rights march across Independence Ave. from the House buildings to the Capitol?” Bachmann said on Fox News Thursday.
"In three years, I have never seen Nancy Pelosi cross the street, the way that you saw in that picture. They deliberately went through that crowd perhaps to try and incite something."
Plenty of cameras were present at the time. Yet, “No one recorded any racial motivations,” Bachmann said.
“Everything we’ve heard in the last week out of the Democrats’ mouths had a racial tinge, and there hasn’t been any racial activity.”
Democrats are falsely labeling conservative activists as racists, Bachmann says.
"It is a smear technique, but now it is beyond smearing people this is actually out and out slandering people," she said.
"Again, 30,000 freedom loving people, they were picking up their own litter afterwards. These were the nicest people you would ever want to meet, happy people. I think there's been a prearranged caricature that is being written, whether it is from the White House, whether it is from the -- I don't know where coming from."
Tea party organizers have criticized those who harassed Democrats.
“We must remember that the folks committing these acts are small in number, extreme in their methods and not yet proven to be members of our movement,” Brendan Steinhauser, who helps organize local tea parties around the country for FreedomWorks, said in a statement.
“But we must be diligent in denouncing all acts of political violence and racism when they occur.”
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