I recently met a man who cycled from his home in California to Maryland. When I exclaimed how interesting it must have been to talk with Americans across the country, he looked at me as if I had two heads. "Are you crazy? I didn't talk to anyone," he told me. "They're all red-necks."

A liberal friend solemnly warned me not to tell anyone I support the Tea Party. They're all racists, wacko survivalists and birthers, she told me, impervious to anything I said about my pride in the Tea Party, and our mainstream issues: fiscal responsibility and constitutional, limited government. She knew we were racist because there were only white people at our rallies. No matter there's not a black face at the anti-global warming groups she goes to, or in her neighborhood or church. It's only conservatives who are judged guilty of racism before proven innocent.

Democrats believe that good and evil in this country is divided along party lines, with all the caring people in their party, and all the greedy, mean people in the other. They also believe that intelligence is doled out along party lines. Conservatives are morons while liberals are the most brilliant people ever seen.

I hear these comments every time I talk to Democrat friends, relatives and acquaintances. They are core to Democrat identity, keeping people loyal voters even as the economy tanks and poor communities flounder under Democrat policies.

It gets worse. Enclosed in their liberal bubble of superiority, Democrats can't picture an intelligent person sincerely and rationally disagreeing. So they jump to the conclusion that conservatives don't believe in their own ideas!

It's true: Democrats can't imagine anyone taking conservative ideas seriously, not even conservatives. They logically infer that Republicans are malevolent liars. We are just pretending to have our own ideas for how to set the country on the right track. When Republicans say they hate socialized medicine, they really mean they hate blacks. When Republicans say they want to respect and strengthen families, it means they hate gays. When they say people should pay for their own birth control, it means they hate women. When they say the right to bear arms is in our Constitution, it means they want school massacres. When they say we need to make Social Security solvent, it means they hate old people.

Republicans can't really believe that individual responsibility is the only path to a free, good and prosperous life. We don't mean it when we say a fiscally responsible government is necessary for a functioning economy and social safety net. The Democrats can see through all ridiculous ideas. It's obvious that Republicans want the old to die, the poor to starve, the young to have no sex, homosexuals to be humiliated and women to have no rights. Above all, we are racist.

As my mother who grew up in Brooklyn would say, what a crock.

A liberal academic study on Obama's election concluded that racism cost him five percent of Democratic votes. At the same time, nine percent of registered Republicans crossed party lines to vote for the first black President. Prejudice correlates with education, not party affiliation. A map by Swedish economists ranks all the countries in the globe on racism. The United States is among the most fair, with less than 4% prejudiced against blacks. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 31 percent of blacks think that most blacks are racist, more racist than whites.

So why do Democrats remain convinced that they alone accepted the Civil Rights movement? Because they quickly rejected the values of Martin Luther King and substituted Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Affirmative action and War on Poverty programs constitute the Democrat test of racism. You think people on welfare would have a better chance of escaping poverty if they are required to work? Rascist and cruel to the poor. You've read about the government report that Project Headstart is a complete failure and wonder if charter schools and strengthening the family are better ways to help children? Clearly racist and cruel to small children.

A study was widely reported in the liberal press before the 2012 election, allegedly proving that America is a racist country. People were asked if they agree or disagree with the following statements:

• "Irish, Italians, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without special favors." • "Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class." • "Over the past few years blacks have gotten less than they deserve." • "It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites."

If Americans agree that blacks could achieve as much as whites with the same level of hard work they are judged racist. If you do not think blacks are handicapped by having ancestors who were slaves, that is now proof of racism. Anyone see a contradiction here? That used to be the definition of not being racist.

If you've noticed that over the past few years blacks get preferred treatment in hiring by police and fire departments, by diversity programs in corporations, by federal bidding procedures, in college admissions - most of these preferences required by law - that proves you're a racist.

Liberals are convinced by this logic. To them it is common sense, irrefutable. No one they respect would disagree.

Racism researcher David Bositis "finds the (Tea Party) movement's arguments about reckless federal spending unpersuasive", so he concludes the Tea Party's real motives are racist. He explains, 'They know they can't use any overtly racist language,' he contends. 'So they use coded language'-questioning the patriotism of the president or complaining about "socialist" schemes to redistribute wealth. Note that Bositis has no actual evidence. He makes that part of his proof - Tea Partiers hide their racism so well they never say (or do) anything racist! That proves they're talking in code.

Danita Kilcullen, the founder of Tea Party Fort Lauderdale counters Bositis' accusations:

"Nobody in the Tea Party movement that I know is a racist." She notes that she attends a church with a black pastor, supports a black candidate (Allen West) in a local congressional race, and backs a Latino candidate (Marco Rubio) for U.S. Senate. When a protestor showed up at one of her group's rallies with a racist sign, she says, she personally kicked him off the corner. "We absolutely don't tolerate anything like that," says Kilcullen."

No matter. Liberals know what they know.

It is time for Republicans to go on the offensive. There is no coded language. We are not afraid and quite capable of saying exactly what we think. Everyone can see with their own eyes how the War on Poverty approach has played out. Democrats treat blacks like they can't get into a college on their own merits, are too emotionally damaged to get out of the ghetto, and can't be treated like capable adults. It's demeaning and destructive.

The Nanny state is a nightmare of no future and no hope. Not just for ghetto blacks, but for all of us. We can't afford a government that is spending as much as 100% of all our income (yes, it would take 100% taxes on everyone to pay Obama's federal bills), squeezing out the private economy. We can't afford a welfare underclass that doesn't pull its own weight. We live in competitive world and need the best efforts of every American.

Personal initiative, responsibility and hard work are the only paths to success. They are G-d given gifts. They are liberated by our free-enterprise system. Government cannot give those gifts but it can destroy them. The Nanny State is depriving not just ghetto blacks, but our entire country of a future. Republicans have a better way.

Republican voters are fed up with our own pusillanimous leaders who don't speak up clearly and forcefully and honestly. We are disgusted with the Republican elected officials who offered up that rodeo clown as a sacrificial lamb to the race-baiters out to lynch him. The answer to Democrat lies is more free speech on our part, not less.

If anything good came out of George Zimmerman's trail in the court of public opinion, it is this: Democrats don't get to define racism anymore. Their race baiting is too ugly, too destructive, too false, and too self-serving. If anything good came out of the IRS scandal it is this: the Tea Party is back. We're proud of our values, we have a positive vision for our country, we believe in both freedom and equality as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Now we've got to win so we can put our values into practice. The country needs us.

The author volunteered in Project Headstart as a teenager, inspected tenements in Harlem for housing violations, served in the Peace Corps in Africa, became a clinical social worker and later a mystery author, writing books set in Kenya. She is regular contributor to AT.