This is Tea Party Reporter Susie Sampson with her latest report on Mitt Romney. "Stay in the oven, Mitt!"

Do you remember the book by Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People? Neither does Rep. Allen West.

West called out not just President Obama, but Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and fellow Floridian Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

“Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, and take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else. You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America.”

He pledged that he will do everything in his power to stop President Obama from “destroy[ing]” the country.

I've got nothing to say to this hyperbolic absurdity except to note that it is only those least-versed in American history who can make such un-American statements. That he feels comfortable saying such things without fear of the House leadership condemning him (can you imagine the outrage if some Democrat said that about George W. Bush during his term? Quelle horreur!) shows how far down the dialogue has degenerated in the Republican Party. Nonetheless, West is becoming such an embarrassment to the Republican establishment that they are taking pains to redistrict West out of existence.

The teahadists eat that sort of thing up with a spoon, naturally. But the Florida GOP, which has a supermajority in the state legislature and is headed up by GOP Governor Rick “Voldemort” Scott, has undertaken a project to redraw the state’s districts—after being compelled to do so by votes on a ballot initiative in 2010. And it looks like Mr. West might be headed south.

Who would rob the nation of such a fiery demagogue? Wingnuts can’t pin this one on the Dems, who are pretty much powerless in Florida. But Colonel Mustard has a clue:

One of the rising stars of the Tea Party is about to be sacrificed by the Republican establishment in Florida, led by someone spinning for Mitt Romney.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

It was Will Weatherford in the Conservatory with a wrench! Well, the truth is, West was in some trouble with voters anyway. I don’t live in his district, but from what I understand, voting in a certified loon like West was something of an aberration for that area, and it’s possible they find West’s constant grandstanding a bit embarrassing.

Hold the presses! Sarah Palin has Facebooked again! This time she's not taking on the President, but going full-tilt Palin against the so-called "cannibals" in the GOP establishment, who is mercilessly, relentlessly doing their best to pile on Newt Gingrich to force him out of the race in order to make room for their nominee apparent.

As usual, Queen Sarah has couched her complaint in the envelope of a threat.

Newt is an imperfect vessel for Tea Party support, but in South Carolina the Tea Party chose to get behind him instead of the old guard’s choice. In response, the GOP establishment voices denounced South Carolinian voters with the same vitriol we usually see from the left when they spew hatred at everyday Americans “bitterly clinging” to their faith and their Second Amendment rights. The Tea Party was once again told to sit down and shut up and listen to the “wisdom” of their betters. We were reminded of the litany of Tea Party endorsed candidates in 2010 who didn’t win. Well, here’s a little newsflash to the establishment: without the Tea Party there would have been no historic 2010 victory at all.

I confess, it's been fun to watch what I predicted two years ago come to pass. It was one thing to sweep in a bunch of newbies on the flood of rabid John Birchers and far-right conservatives in a midterm, and entirely another to do it in a general election. Imperfect as he may be, Mitt Romney is the anointed heir to the nomination, having walked the requisite path of being Mr. Number Two in 2008, having at least a few years in public office, and most of all, having a whole lot of his own money. Now the Great Divide has burst wider than the parting of the Red Sea, and Republicans have a problem. A big one.

Palin has stood on the sidelines for months, ever since she decided not to put forward her own candidacy, and I believe it was so she could be the agitator pushing conservatives away from the mainstream candidate toward one of her choosing. And for whatever reason, Sarah has chosen Newt. Via The Politico:

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Politics in Florida is a rough business, for sure, but this incident seems a bit over the top. The video is a little rough to watch, but worth it. There's clearly a heckler, who isn't shy about correcting some of Newt's more "grandiose" statements. She began by challenging him about his Freddie Mac associations and then the crowd just started in on her.

Via Daily Beast

The woman kept shouting, and Gingrich implored her to give others a chance to hear him. But Jennings kept it up, and Gingrich continued engaging her.

“Nothing you say is true,” he said with a tight smile, as 1,200 people cheered him on. “Noise without knowledge does not make a free society.”

Meanwhile, two local supporters descended on the woman, one being Karen Hoffman, a Tea Party activist, who told reporters not to pay attention to Jennings. Yeah, right.

Hoffman also called for the police to silence Jennings. A few feet away, a man attending the rally helpfully started shouting, “You’re an imbecile. Get out of here!” At this point, if Jennings hadn’t completely disrupted the rally, the supporter was doing his best to finish the job.

Finally, the police officers resorted to begging her to stop heckling.

“Are you going to arrest me?” Jennings asked. “I still have more to say.”

As Jennings was being escorted out, Karin Hoffman, a tea partier and head of DC Works For Us decided to take things a step farther and shoved a photographer's camera in his face, just because she could, evidently. Oh, she also happens to be one of the organizers of the Tea Party For Newt groups, playing a role in Florida which is similar to the one Judson Phillips, head of Tea Party Nation, is playing in other southern states.

I guess thuggery knows no gender, as long as she can talk tough to hecklers and push photographers around. But I thought tea partiers were all about liberty and the First Amendment and the Constitution and things. I guess that's only true when it's about their liberty to shove photographers and call people names? With two cops right there, one wonders why Ms. Hoffman wasn't escorted out.

For all of the banter lately about the death and irrelevance of the tea party, I can't help but wonder. There's a tone that seems to be ramping up right alongside Newt Gingrich's surge, a tone that reminds me of the 2009 town halls, the violent rhetoric, and the surging wave of angry people who aren't sure why they're angry beyond knowing they want that black guy out of the Oval Office sooner rather than later. The Occupy movement had drowned them out quite nicely for awhile, but with the help of Fox News and a nice infusion of cash into the southern states, they seem to be gaining traction again.

I don't think it's my imagination, but I sure hope Newt's "surge" ends right after he tosses the Republican establishment into utter panic and disarray by winning Florida and Nevada.

Here's one other thing. I wonder how Newt's "shadow campaign" organized by his SuperPAC plays into Hoffman's participation. Food for thought, and further investigation.

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I have to admire Sally Kohn's fortitude in agreeing to be a Fox News contributor and also in sticking to her guns in her debut segment. By the end of it, I realized why this Congress will never get anything done and why Harry Reid's "ditch the tea party" remark on yesterday's Meet the Press has become so controversial in so many circles.

Before I launch into the segment itself, I want to note that I found it interesting that Fox News has brought on someone who isn't a liberal in name only as a contributor. Kohn's background is not the usual Fox News centrist Conservadem fare: she's got ties to the OWS movement, she has strong organizing credentials, and she's decidedly liberal. Does this mean Fox News is responding to their tanking ratings, or trying to bring someone on they think the conservatives can score points on? If the latter, they may be surprised. Kohn definitely held her own in the segment and gently, but firmly, made her points.

This segment was intended to be a 'debate' between Kohn and the tea party representative, David Webb, about Congress and whether compromise is even possible. As Kohn notes mid-segment, most liberals think Democrats are too willing to compromise in the face of rock-solid obstruction from the tea party and Republicans.

But beyond stating the obvious, this segment stands as tribute to the underlying argument about who it is that's willing to compromise and who isn't. I hope every Fox viewer got a clue as a result of their little discussion. Here's the key to the whole thing, at about 5:30 or so:

KOHN: I hate to trouble you with those pesky facts, but we have the lowest percentage of corporate tax -- real corporate tax rates -- in the developed world already. In addition to that, Republicans want to lower that further. In addition to that, corporations are sitting on two trillion in unspent money and they're not creating jobs. So your big corporate --

[crosstalk]]

-- your big business job fairy hasn't appeared and meanwhile, businesses are staying --

[crosstalk]

-- you've got to create demand, put money in the hands of working people.

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Credit: HindustanTimes

This new generation of Republicans, the self-styled Tea Partiers, want to repeal just about all of the 20th century. They don’t like Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, LBJ, or any of those Kennedy brothers. They say they want to repeal child labor laws, the 40 hour work week, food safety laws, environmental laws, the income tax, direct election of Senators, Social Security, Medicare, the minimum wage, banking regulation, Pell Grants, Head Start, civil rights, voting rights, and just about every other form of progress the 1900s brought us. You know, William Buckley used to say that “a conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling stop.” These guys are standing athwart history yelling “go back!” They will happily shut down government at the drop of a hat, for any reason at any time- even when they get what they asked for in terms of policy concessions. Backed by the 1%, the Wall Street elite and the captains of industry who destroyed the economy but are deeply hurt and offended when anyone tries to hold them accountable for it, these Republicans are hell-bent are creating an economy based on the ideas of Ayn Rand and Gordon Gekko, where greed is good, generosity and kindness are weaknesses, and we are taught that it is everyone for themselves and devil take the hindmost.

And speaking of the Wall Street big boys (not being sexist, virtually all of them are) who are not just the top 1% but part of the top 0.1 %, they set new records in 2011 for arrogance that even I didn’t think they could. I had assumed that after some of their more ridiculous moments of the last few years (like one financier comparing Obama to a Nazi because he wanted to take away one of their loopholes), that their very well paid PR guys would tell them “hey, the anger level at us is really rising, we should try to avoid public displays of unbearable hubris”. But the PR team’s nightmares continue multiplying because of quotes like these referring to protesters, one 0.1 percenter said "who gives a crap about some imbecile?” And here’s another 0.1 percenter: “instead of an attack on the 1 percent, let’s call it an attack on the very productive.”

But this was also the year when the movement of, by, and for the bottom 99% started to rise up. This 99er movement is forcing economic issues- and yes, issues of class and economic inequity- onto the American table to be debated and talked about in new ways. The push and shove of these two fundamental ideas- that society should be organized on behalf of the 99% not the 1% vs. the Social Darwinism of greed being good- will dominate our political debate not only in 2012 but for years to come.

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From January of 2011 -- SNL Pans Bachmann For Her SOTU Tea Party Response:

Saturday Night Live gave Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and CNN a bit of grief for her "tea party" response to the president's State of the Union Address. They could have done better by just airing Bachmann's actual speech since their parody wasn't nearly as creepy or bizarre as the real thing.

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For all the talk of how "peaceful" the tea party protests were in contrast to the Occupy Wall Street, videos like this one by Dave Neiwert really highlight what a big lie that is. Tea party thugs decided to bust up a MoveOn picnic in Roseburg, Oregon, and then brag about how they halted to slow march to Marxism.

Up till now, I just figured John Boehner was incompetent as GOP Speaker of the House, and he may still be. But Rachel Maddow makes a compelling argument here; namely, that Boehner was set up to fail on purpose by his own caucus. Watch the whole video for her argument.

In thinking about it, that would answer a lot of questions for me about why it was Tea Party freshmen who defected first after firmly declaring they would not, could not possibly vote for a 2-month payroll tax cut. If Cantor saw this battle as one he could set Boehner up to lose, he must really have designs on that Speaker seat before he loses in 2012.

I think there will be more to this story in the months to come.

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Keeping it classy:

California libertarian and Tea Party darling Jules Manson is caught calling for the assassination of President Barack Obama and his children. On Sunday, many Facebook users were greeted by the shocking spectacle of a California libertarian and Ron Paul supporter by the name of Jules Manson advocating for the assassination of President Barack Obama. Manson, a failed politician, recently ran for and lost a seat on the City of Carson’s City Council last March. The following is the text of Manson’s racist, treasonous, deplorable post:

“Assassinate the (expletive deleted by examiner editors) n****r and his monkey children”

Manson posted the disturbing and openly racist call to assassinate Obama and Obama’s children on his own Facebook wall, which was open to the public. Manson, a Ron Paul libertarian, was angry with Obama over a policy matter.

Manson has since taken down the post and made his Facebook page private, due in no small way to the outrage rightfully directed at him. But that was after Manson tried to rationalize that his use of the n-word didn't make a racist. No, seriously.

Two hours after making the offensive post, and after being bombarded by hundreds of Facebook users outraged by his racist call to assassinate the leader of the free world, Manson made a bizarre Facebook post, presumably in the hopes of justifying his unjustifiable rant. There Mason argued that using the word “n****r” does not make him a racist.

Okay, then. Manson ran as a "Libertarian conservative" for City Council for the City of Carson in Los Angeles County and lost. Manson was upset over the NDAA vote, although curiously, his call for assassination didn't involve anyone in Congress who overwhelmingly voted for it, nor does it explain his inclusion of the Obama children or use of really repulsive racist language. Whatever caused his outrage, I hope he thinks it's worth the Secret Service visit he so richly deserves.