Meghan McCain: Tea Party represents 'innate racism'

Young people 'turned off' by Tea Party movement's racist undertones, McCain says

The daughter of former presidential candidate John McCain has sharply criticized the Tea Party movement, accusing it of "innate racism."

In an appearance on ABC's The View, Meghan McCain also took issue with a number of recent statements from Sarah Palin, criticizing the former Alaska governor for defending Rush Limbaugh's use of the word "retard" and for suggesting that President Obama launch a war against Iran in order to win a second term.

McCain described Former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo's call for a literacy test for voters as "innate racism."

In his opening speech to the Tea Party convention last week, Tancredo urged the creation literacy tests for voters, a move some observers likened to a return to the Jim Crowe laws of the pre-Civil Rights Act era.

“People who would not even spell the word vote or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House... named Barack Hussein Obama," Tancredo told the Tea Party crowd.

"It's innate racism, and I think it's why young people are turned off by this movement," McCain retorted on The View.

"I'm sorry, but revolutions start with young people, not 65 year old people talking about literacy tests and people who can't say the word 'vote' in English," McCain added.

McCain, a self-described "progressive Republican," criticized Palin's assertion that President Obama could get himself re-elected to a second term if he launched a war against Iran.

"You should never go to war unless its the absolute last circumstance," McCain said.

As for Palin's defense of Rush Limbaugh for using the word "retard" after calling for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's resignation over the same word last week, McCain said it was a symbol of "exactly what is wrong with politics today.

"We can't placate and say Democrats can say one thing and Republicans can say another thing," she said.

McCain added that the rhetoric coming from the Tea Party movement and from Republicans like Palin "will continue to turn off young voters, and anybody who says different is smoking something."

The following video was broadcast on ABC's The View, Feb. 8, 2010.