The scorched earth style of opposition does indeed work at dragging down Obama and the Democrats' numbers. But it also keeps approval of Republicans down, and "generic Republicans" still do not poll better than Democrats. They're probably poised to pick up 15 to 25 House seats next year, especially if Democrats again don't bother to get the youth vote out and if the "recovery" continues to be jobless. But the Republican were also supposed to hold on to an upstate New York district they've represented for 150 years, until the tea parties, Sarah Palin, and the Club for Growth got involved.

Maybe the excommunication of moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava was an aberration, and the grownups will rein in the activists and run electable Chris Christie types. But if they do, the disgruntled anti-authoritarian Glenn Beck acolytes will rebel.

Already, the Club for Growth—which threw a lot of money at NY-23 and in doing so gave the seat to the Democrats—has endorsed Marco Rubio for Senate in Florida. Rubio is the conservative challenging popular moderate governor Charlie Crist. As governor, Crist enjoys approval ratings in the high 60s among Democrats, independents, and Republicans. But Marco Rubio enjoys the support of George Will, The National Review, and the aforementioned very wealthy Club for Growth.

Rubio is, at the moment, polling below the likely Democratic nominee, which is a feat, because no one knows who the Democratic nominee is, as a race against Crist was not expected to be winnable.

Meanwhile, out in broken California, the Republicans have decided to launch a real challenge to Senator Barbara Boxer for the first time since she took office. With Boxer facing rising unfavorable numbers, former Hewlett-Packard executive McCain campaign insider Carly Fiorina decided to throw her hat in the ring. Fiorina has a lot of money, good name recognition, and might appeal to moderates and women who are tired of Boxer. So, of course, True Conservatives are beginning to rally behind a crazy man named Chuck DeVore, an Assemblyman who is currently tied with Fiorina in the polls.

What sort of Republican is this DeVore character? Let's look at something he wrote last week in an Amazon review.

American Progressives and European fascist theorists admired each other and exchanged ideas. From William James to Georges Sorel, from eugenics to the militarization of society ("War on Poverty" anyone? It was William James who penned the "Moral Equivalent of War" in 1906), both the American left and European fascists sought to remake society using crises to urge action to justify bigger government at the expense of individual liberty.

Ronald Reagan had it right in 1981, when he remarked that Roosevelt's New Deal had much in common with Mussolini's fascism, including frequent words of praise from Roosevelt's brain trust directed towards Italy in the 1930s.

Good luck becoming a Senator from California, sir!

This is all sort of like if Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy had been to run clones of himself in all 50 states, instead of diverting money to Democrats who actually had chances to win. So there are basically two end games:

• Republican infighting leads to unelectable candidates losing what should've been easy pickups across the board.
• Apocalyptic death cult masquerading as Republican party makes the usual midterm gains, Congress promptly shuts down federal government again, Obama impeached for lying under oath about where he was born.

It's a good thing none of the tangible benefits of health care reform are scheduled to go into effect until 2013! Otherwise the Death Panel lines would be unbearable come 2011.

Michele Bachmann has called for a revolt against healthiness starting at noon today, and according to Politico, thousands of tea partiers have heeded the call so far, standing outside the Capitol and chanting "Palin/Bachmann 2012!", which is maybe like their version of Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project or something?

The protesters, who are occupying the patch of grass only a few yards from where Barack Obama took the oath of office on Jan. 20, have also chanted "you work for us!" Many are holding signs that echo their distrust of Obama and their belief that he is pursuing socialist policies.

They've advanced to within yards of Obama! Fix the bayonets and say a prayer boys, it's happening.

It's not just teabaggers taking back their government: Eight protesters were arrested this morning for occupying Sen. Joe Leiberman's office and demanding that he support reform. If you're a member of Congress, today's a good day for a long lunch in a dark bar.

Also: Strangely, Fox News isn't staying live with the tea party without commercial interruption—they're talking about some baby someone found in a box somewhere.

Take, for instance, this woman at a healthcare town hall sponsored by a Las Vegas radio station. After watching an Israeli immigrant to the United States praise his homeland's government-run healthcare system, she is moved to respond, "Heil Hitler!"

What does that mean? Well, it could mean "Heil Hitler, you Jew, you are a subhuman blood-sucker," a sentiment common to right-wing extremists who actively seek the violent overthrow of the federal government. Or it could mean, "By supporting government-run healthcare, sir, you may as well be shouting 'Heil Hitler,' because you are supporting Barack Obama, who is a Nazi"—a sentiment also common to right-wing extremists who actively seek the violent overthrow of the federal government. You see the problem? The feverish, paranoid snake that is contemporary right-wing political thought has begun to eat its own tail, and the swamp is full of anti-Semites and Nazi-haters who both seek the same thing—a return to the "real America."

As you can see from the look of terror that crosses this woman's face when the Israeli challenges her—"I'm a Jew! You're telling me, ‘Heil Hitler'? Shame of you!"—she appears to have briefly forgotten which one she is. In the most cosmic of ironies, she is wearing an Israeli Defense Forces t-shirt, so it's not likely that she's a rabid neo-Nazi. Still, you can see in her eyes that she is frantically checking an exhaustive catalog of political outrages in the back of her mind—which is worse, supporting healthcare reform, or yelling "Heil Hitler" at a Jew?

She quickly decides that it's the former, and tells the Israeli that, as a Jew, he should be more frightened than anyone of Obama's policies. It's about as comprehensive a tangle of our current political dynamic as we've seen—a middle-aged white woman who seems to believe that Jews are good to the extent that Israel is good because Israel kills Arabs but bad to the extent that one of them supports socialized medicine shouts "Heil Hitler" at an Israeli because Hitler was bad to the extent that he was like Obama but was also good to the extent that he was against Communist Jews. It's taxing to remember where the political lines are drawn when the only thing you care about is hating the president.

And it's like a comment thread on Red State brought to life. The woman here had probably written "Heil Hitler" into dozens of comment forms during her long, lonely nights of rage, and she clearly was shocked when she realized she'd said it in real life. "Heil Hitler!" "Let's bring an assault rifle to the next town hall!" It's a reverse TRON, and the trolls have escaped into our world.

After she tells the Israeli that he should be more afraid than anyone else of nationalized healthcare—because, just like in Israel, it's an anti-Semitic plot—she mocks him with a caustic "boo-hoo" because he complained about an $8,000 trip to the emergency room without healthcare. Jews are so cheap!

[Via Think Progress.]

Susan Roesgan's report from last week's Tea Party in Chicago ended with a particularly damning example of a TV news reporter reporting the truth:

Over shouts of, "You're not a reporter," Roesgen quickly wrapped up an interview with an attendee, then said, "I think you get the general tenor of this. It's anti-government, anti-CNN since this is highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox."

Well, she forgot CNBC (the "Rick Santelli for President" sign behind her should've reminded her!) but otherwise pretty spot-on.

So yesterday, former CNN correspondent Eileen O'Connor demanded Susan issue an apology, for getting testy with an angry nut. "She was rude to people she was interviewing," O'Connor explained, and as we all know that is never acceptable in broadcast journalism.

Roesgen got snippy with a crazy interviewee while trying to cover the tea partiers, and the crowd turned on her. "I think you get the general tenor of this," she said. "It's anti-government, anti-CNN since this is highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox."

Back in 2005, though, according to a Fox News source, Roesgen really wanted to work for that right-wing conservative network. She sent a tape of her on-air work to Fox's then-programming chief Kevin Magee in January 2005, and followed up with another reel to Magee's successor Bill Shine in September 2005. Needless to say, she didn't get the gig.

Roesgen didn't respond to an e-mail request for comment, and a CNN spokeswoman said, "I don't know anything about that."

So next time you see CNN or MSNBC talking heads—like Fox News alum David Shuster, for instance—talking about how awful Fox is (which it is!), just remember: It's all business, kids.

As we've noted, CNN's Anderson Cooper and MSNBC's David Shuster and Rachel Maddow have been having been saying "teabagging" a lot—over and over and over again!—in reference to yesterday's attempt by Fox News and its slackjawed audience to re-enact Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy at festivals nationwide (think of it as their Rocky Horror Picture Show).

"What's with all this 'teabagging' business?" Fox News wondered. "They're saying that word an awful lot." After some investigating, Fox came to understand that CNN and MSNBC haven't been shooting straight—the word "teabag" carries with it subtle mockery when used by pointy-headed liberals conversant in the coded language of sexual perversity!

Teabagging, for those who don't live in a frat house, refers to a sexual act involving part of the male genitalia and a second person's face or mouth.

WHAT PART!?!?!?

"I've never seen anything like it," Bozell said. "The oral sex jokes on (CNN) and particularly MSNBC on teabagging ... they had them by the dozens. That's how insulting they were toward people who believe they're being taxed too highly."

Yes, a bunch of anchors employed a double entrende to mock a mindless farce. (Why not watch the video compilation we posted yesterday, at right, one more time?) But let's remember why it's funny. Simply picking a sexually suggestive phrase and using it to describe the tea parties is not, in and of itself, funny. What makes it funny is this: The reason people call it "teabagging" is that the idiots at Fox News started calling it "teabagging" themselves without understanding that they were using a word that, in another context, means gently sucking on somebody's testicles. Now that is funny, and Maddow pointed it out in her April 9 broadcast, with video of a Fox Newser saying, "teabag the fools in D.C.!"

But Fox does get one thing kind of right, in reference to Maddow's buddy act with Gawker Media alumna Ana Marie Cox:

If anyone thinks the orally charged remarks on mainstream cable were just a coincidence, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow's segments over the past week with guest, Air America's Ana Marie Cox, would dissolve all doubt. Their on-air gymnastics, dancing around the double entendre of the week, looked like live-action Beavis and Butthead.

They're both very pretty ladies! But Maddow does kind of have a Beavis Butthead thing going on, doesn't she?

Well, as far as we know, only Neil Cavuto of Fox News was even at the Sacramento rally, so they were probably just "playing" to him. (Glenn Beck, meanwhile, is at The Alamo, where his mic is hooked into the rally's PA system, because Fox is of course merely covering these grassroots protests like they'd cover any other protest. Oh, now he's hanging out with Ted Nugent. Soon they will be off the basement, to look for Glenn's bike.)

Shep Smith spent his hour talking about pirates, the economy, and other actual news, but even he had to go live to Neil in Sacramento. He was not interested in the rally so much as he was just delighted to have an excuse to make fun of how Susan Roesgen got yelled at after asking a TEA PARTIER what the hell he was actually protesting.

No one is happier than the nation's cable news talkers, who have been celebrating their liberation to talk about testicles while on the air. Gawker video Mike Byhoff has graciously strung them all together for your viewing pleasure. But there is news!

WASHINGTON (AP) A robot was inspecting a suspicious package on the North Lawn of the White House after tax protesters threw what appears to be a box of tea bags over the White House fence.
That prompted officials to clear Pennsylvania Avenue Wednesday.

That is the adorable White House suspicious packages robot, pictured at right, after a similar "throwing shit over the White House fence" incident in 2006. He is the best! (FYI, EVERYONE: YOU MAY NOT THROW SHIT OVER THE WHITE HOUSE FENCE.)

A couple thousand people in dozens of cities across the nation are standing in the rain waving crazy signs that make sense, because it's TEA PARTY DAY!

We could turn on the non-stop Fox coverage, but, you know, we're listening to music right now. (Ok, Shep's on. He is talking to that hack Neil Cavuto and gently pouring water on claims of grassroots popular outrage at the expansion of government.) We'll just get our information from the LIBERAL MEDIA. How many millions of fed-up patriots are marching, exactly?

In Boston, a few hundred protesters gathered on the Boston Common-a short distance from the original Tea Party-with some dressed in Revolutionary War garb and carrying signs that said "Barney Frank, Bernie Madoff: And the Difference Is?" and "D.C.: District of Communism."

Event coordinator Christen Varley, a conservative Catholic Republican, said she was thrilled with the turnout.

"Personally, I envisioned me and 100 friends on the steps of the Statehouse," she said. "I never saw this coming."

That's nothing! "More than 1,000 people" gathered in Des Moines. In Hartford, Connecticut, where in the '80s an anti-income tax rally attracted 40,000 protesters, around 3,000 tea partiers made their voices heard!

Meanwhile, in DC:

Protesters, using a rented truck to haul the million tea bags, began unloading their cargo at the park this morning but were told by officials that they didn't have proper permits and must move the tea.

Hah. Sad. That was before the robot attack too.

Hey, here in New York, the Tea Party is being held at 7 p.m., at City Hall. Newt Gingrich will be there! And probably so will we! You know, if it doesn't look too gross outside.

The users of a certain neo-Nazi message board that will soon invade this site with a flood of nutty racist comments have been debating these recent "Tea Party" protests, and at least one user likes what he sees.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think every WN needs to not only attend the April 15th Tea Party nearest you (I'm going to the Alamo in San Antonio) but then stay involved and help provide leadership to this movement.

I believe that this is the white revolution we've been waiting for.

It doesn't look what we expected but this is it.

I've seen probably 50 videos on TV showing previous marches and what strikes me is that the participants are all WHITE. It stands to reason . . . we're the ones being taxed to support Affirmative Action, Welfare and other worthless social programs. It's our tax dollars going to ACORN and supporting the 12 million illegals swarming into our neighborhoods.

For the first time, white people (a.k.a. the lemmings) are finally awake and taking to the streets.

The rest of the thread is various excited white supremacists excitedly volunteering to bring all their white supremacist buddies to the Tax Day Tea Party protest nearest them. Let's see how many of them end up on Fox's all-day intensive coverage of this grass-roots populist nationwide protest!

In addition to the White Supremacists, the Tax Day Tea Parties will be full of discord between the crazy Paultards who've been doing this sort of thing for years and the Johnnies-come-lately who just got involved once GOP leadership, Fox, and various corporate think tanks co-opted the whole nutty libertarian thing to make it a generalized protest against everything Obama.

And all the teabags you keep mailing are causing Capitol office evacuations. Whee! This is going to be a hilarious shitshow, right?

Specifically, old-fashioned "the commies are stealing our essence" talk followed by this hilarious conversation:

Woman: [Shouts] "Burn the books!" [applause]

Man: "I don't think you were serious about that, were you?"

Woman: "I am too."

Man: "Burn all the books?!"

Woman: "The ones in college, those, those brainwashing books."

Man: "[laughs] Brainwashing books?"

Woman: "Yes."

Man: "Which ones are those?"

Woman: "Like, the evolution crap, and, yeah..."

This is what Glenn Beck needs, from Americans! To act like crazy people the day after 9/11! Who needs to think about things for even one second before shouting something? Rationality is for terrorists! BURN THE BOOKS!

You know, get a bunch of ANSWER kids together for a little protest planning meeting and you will hear all sorts of crazy nonsense, but those kooks are aggressively marginalized by the liberal political mainstream and 'legitimate' liberal media, they are not organized and coddled by major think tanks or lauded as heroes and encouraged to indulge their craziest conspiratorial musings by cynical cable news hosts with a daily audience of 2 million+. Just sayin'!

Burn the brainwashing books!