It's an Alinsky tactic, the subtext of which is that TEA Party Conservatives are necessarily racist by associating the movement with the Confederacy, never mind the overlooked fact that the old time secessionists and slave owners were all Democrats, and that it was the Republican Party that ended slavery and then fought the Ku Klux Klan (again all Democrats).
The Confederacy wasn’t racist, it was status quo. Lincoln was one of the biggest racist there ever was. Need I quote Lincoln on his plan to deport ALL blacks or how he thought the black man would always be the inferior?