Overtly racially motivated rhetoric is becoming increasingly acceptable in Republican politics in the US. Two Italian researchers now argue that this can partly be traced back to the conservative Tea Party movement which has reshaped the Republican party’s identity away from its traditional conservative axioms to one that is more nativist and racially tinged. Luigi Leone and Fabio Presaghi from the Sapienza University of Rome have published their findings in Springer’s journal Race and Social Problems.