Roy Blunt says maybe the government "should have never have gotten in the health care business" with Medicare and Medicaid.

Roy Blunt used a parable to compare President Obama and other Democrats in Washington to monkeys.

Roy Blunt wants to repeal health care reform.

Roy Blunt is not conservative enough for his state's teabaggers. When they heard Michele Bachmann was coming to Missouri to campaign for Blunt, 28 Tea Party groups issued a statement:

When we received a notification that Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a strong supporter of Tea Parties nationally, and the originator of a “Tea Party Caucus” in Washington last week, will be coming to Missouri on July 31st to make phone calls with Roy Blunt from the St. Louis GOP headquarters, and to be a featured speaker at a Blunt fundraiser that night, we were shocked. We believe she has been grossly misled if she understands him to be a Missouri Tea Party candidate.

Tea Party participants believe the spending in Washington has to STOP. Roy Blunt voted for TARP and Cash for Clunkers. For Michele Bachmann to come to Missouri and give the impression that all the Missouri Tea Parties support Roy Blunt is an abomination of everything we have been standing up for. “Most Tea Party supporters I know will be baffled by Michele Bachmann helping someone with a record like Roy Blunt before the primary vote,” said Jedidiah Smith, a Tea party leader in Franklin County, Missouri.

Talk about raising the "ok, that's conservative enough" bar.

In any case, those guys aren't happy that the Tea Party has run away from the racist label after the recent NAACP dustup.

This was a great opportunity for the Tea Party movement to show some backbone by laughing in the face of the imbeciles at the NAACP. But did they? Of course not. Predictably, they responded in the same tired, pusillanimous manner with which they always respond to these never ending accusations. Instead of replying with a loud BWAHAHAHA! or a “Yeah? What’s your point?” or “So what?” or “Of course we’re racists -we’re white people.

That’s what “racist” means or “Can any of you race hustlers even spell “racist”?”, they predictably went into their usual bend over and grab their ankles mode. They protested that oh no, we’re not racists at all, we don’t tolerate racists at our rallies which are really huge rainbow coalitions, and it’s the NAACP and the liberals who are the real racists, etc., etc. You know, the lame “Bull Connor was a Democrat!” defense. It never works, but they just keep trotting it out like some lucky charm in the vain hope that this time it will work.

Racist means white person. Period. Until the Tea Partiers get that through their heads, nothing’s going to change, and they’re never going to be an effective political force.

All they're asking for is some honesty! Here is Dale Robertson, founder of the Tea Party:

It's easy to see why those modern KKK clones are frustrated.

Via the Miami Times.

Do the policies of the Obama administration favor whites over blacks, favor blacks over whites, or do they treat both groups the same?

Favors whites over blacks: Tea Party,  1%, All Respondents,  2%

Favors blacks over whites: Tea Party, 25%, All Respondents, 11%

Treat both the same:       Tea Party, 65%, All Respondents, 83%

Don't know or answer:      Tea Party,  9%, All Respondents,  5%

It's notable that the overwhelming majority of both Tea Partiers and general public agrees that the president's policies are fair to both sides. It's also notable that a number of teabaggers, double the general public, believe that Obama favors blacks over whites.

I must admit, I found all this quite surprising. Anecdotal caveats noted, I'm just not seeing how this squares with what I see. I mean, there were a couple of executive orders helping out historically black colleges but other than that, I couldn't find a single administration policy that explicitly favored blacks.

It could be that I'm being irrational expecting everyone to be rational. It very well may be that all the social spending the government is undertaking is favoring blacks since blacks happen to have higher rates of unemployment, lack of health insurance, and are frequently victims of financial scams. Of course, in the aggregate, there are MORE whites than blacks who are unemployed, lack health insurance, and are victims of financial scams.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that there are just about 11 million unemployed white people. There are 2.8 million unemployed black people. I don't know what percentage of unemployment persons get benefits, but I believe it is safe to say these benefits are not allocated by race. Therefore, most federal unemployment payments go to white people. If you believe all citizens are equal, how is that favoring white over black?

The Census Bureau estimates that there are 21 million white people without health insurance. There are 7.4 million blacks similarly situated. Therefore, the vast majority of beneficiaries of the Obama healthcare act will be white people. If you're sitting in the government seat, it is hard to conclude that federal spending is going overwhelmingly to blacks.

It may feel good for the extreme right wing tea partiers to justify their racism by saying the president favors his own race over others. But the facts stand in sharp contrast.

I suppose this puts the Shirley Sherrod incident into perspective. There is a group of people, mainly older, conservative, white males, who believe that blacks get too many advantages. The false story about Ms. Sherrod feeds that narrative. If only it were true.

There hasn't been much action on urban poverty. There hasn't been much action on second-chance legislation. There hasn't even been an increase in the minimum wage or the earned income tax credit. But, again, the facts don't matter because this is a zero sum game. If white people are losing, black people must be gaining.

I don't know if the facts are persuasive to them or not. They probably aren't. All I know is that if the Obama Administration favors black folks, this would come as very surprising news to black folks.

Rep. Michelle Bachmann's (R-MN) House Tea Party Caucus debut yesterday mimicked the tea party movement it hopes to represent in Washington -- it was confusing, bumbling and offered a dearth of solid policy goals. [...]

As David Frum's blog reported all day yesterday, Bachmann's caucus list was about as good an example of a poorly-run organization as you can find this week, save for the Department of Agriculture. The Tea Party Caucus list changed throughout the day, with names disappearing and reappearing as reporters called to verify things. The list itself disappeared from Bachmann's website for a time, before finally showing up again and staying up for good.

One Capitol Hill Republican with knowledge of the process told me the embarrassing debacle of the list was a 100% Bachmann affair -- the caucus list is run out of her office and its errors were, as far as my source knew, thanks to Bachmann's staff. [...]

For reporters there, it was a struggle to find anything specific to write in our notebooks. Mine has these two phrases underlined several times: "Add Skype" and "cite Constitution." Those represented the two clear policy goals I heard from the Tea Party Caucus and its members. The first came from Bachmann, who called on Speaker Pelosi to allow the use of the popular video phone service at the Capitol so that caucus members can speak to tea partiers more easily.

The second came from Rep. Steve King (R-IA), a caucus member and tea party superstar in his own right. Asked by reporters after the event what specific laws he'd offer as a legislator carrying the tea party banner into the House, King said the only thing he could think of for the moment was a law requiring members to cite the Constitution when sponsoring legislation.

To some degree, tea partiers have done a service to the GOP by diverting attention of conservatives from the stained GOP brand, and they've also made conservatism relevant to the media. On the other hand, extremism and antiquated racial attitudes have come to define the tea party movement for many Americans, and most Republicans are smart enough to know they can't afford to be seen as racist extremists.

All of which leads us to a report in Politico today from Jonathan Allen and Jake Sherman:

GOP leery of Tea Party Caucus

With the official formation of a congressional Tea Party Caucus, Rep. Michele Bachmann has thrust an existential question before House Republican leaders: Are you in or are you out?

Indiana’s Mike Pence, chairman of the Republican Conference, was adamant. “You betcha,” he said, deploying a Minnesota catchphrase.

But Minority Leader John Boehner won’t have his name on the caucus list.

And Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor and his chief deputy, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California — known as “Young Guns” for the GOP — are undecided.

As examples like this start to proliferate, it's going to start becoming clear that despite the energy tea partiers have brought to conservative politics, the tea party movement has put the GOP between a rock and a hard place. Once Labor Day rolls around, the real campaign begins, and average Americans will start paying attention to the election season. One thing they don't want to see is guys dressed up in strange revolutionary outfits talking about civil war and saying Obama is Hitler. The problem the GOP has is that the other thing most Americans don't want see is a return to the failed policies of the Bush-Republican years.

That's one of the reasons why, as bad as the economic situation is, and as realistic as it is that the GOP could win this election, it would be a mistake to count Democrats out. The other part of the reason is that Democrats have been very successful in enacting key policies to start changing the direction of this country. It's true that not everybody believes Democrats have gone far enough, but it's equally true that people don't want to turn back the clock to the way things were the last time Republicans were in power.

On paper, everything should be cutting against Democrats this year -- a bad economy and control of the White House. Nonetheless, we're still seeing empirical evidence -- such as the latest Gallup poll showing Democrats up by 6 -- that it would be just as big a mistake to assume that Republicans will win this election as it would be to assume that they will lose. For all the Democratic problems, Republicans have troubles as well. And I wouldn't trade their challenges for ours in million years.

Republican lawmakers see plenty of good in the tea party, but they also see reasons to worry. The movement, which has ignited passion among conservative voters and pushed big government to the forefront of the 2010 election debate, has also stirred quite a bit of controversy. Voters who don't want to privatize Social Security or withdraw from the United Nations could begin to see the tea party and the Republican Party as one and the same.

Oh no! People might begin to confuse the rightwingnuttia of the tea party with the rightwingnuttia of the Republican Party.

Because of course this concern is completely misplaced given that:

All told, nearly 80 percent of tea party supporters describe themselves as Republicans, while 15 percent say they are Democrats and just six percent are, in their own minds, "pure independents."

... which Ms. Murray would have known had she read the Washington Post. But relying on things like facts would upset the narrative that the tea party is some new, powerful political force, so ...

I think it's clear to me that when I look at the Tea Party it's about one-third Democrat, one-third Republican, one-third independents.

Uh, no wonder these yokels couldn't balance a budget if you handed one to them....they can't do basic math.

Fact: tea party people aren't just Republicans, they are conservative Republicans. 79% of them identify with the GOP (62% as conservative GOPers). Now I can understand why Republicans wanted to done the tea party cloak to overcome the negative image of the GOP brand....but calling themselves Democrats? That ain't gonna' fly.