David Gregory has a Freudian slip and admits what we all know already, that the "Tea Party" is nothing but a force "within" the Republican Party. This interview is from Seattle's KING5. Anchor: How significant do you think the Tea Party is as you
September 22, 2010

David Gregory has a Freudian slip and admits what we all know already: That the "Tea Party" is nothing but a force "within" the Republican Party. This interview is from Seattle's KING5.

Anchor: How significant do you think the Tea Party is as you travel across the country and it's not just Christine O'Donnell...

Gregory: It's not.

Anchor: It's the Tea Party-ism everywhere.

Gregory: It is the most animating force right now in the Republican Party as it tries to figure out what it wants to be. It really captures the frustration that government is spending too much, borrowing too much and doesn't seem to be getting a lot done and in many ways it's a call for a return to more tried and true conservative values, the entrenchment of government. It's not dissimilar from Ross Perot in 1992, focused on debt, focused on borrowing and focused on some of the insanity in Washington D.C.

Anchor: So a good decision on the part of the Republican Party to embrace some of these Tea Party candidates?

Gregory: Well, I mean they don't have much of a choice. I mean they're riding a tiger. In some cases they've rather not. I mean in Delaware it certainly is not helping their chances of picking up that Senate seat.

They're in a position where they've got to try to manage this. They want the enthusiasm the Tea Party brings and then the long term is a little more problematic in terms of what happens if they actually get elected.

This was a welcome admission by Gregory -- whether he meant to or not -- that there is no daylight between the Republican Party and the movement by the extreme right wing of their base that's labeled itself the "Tea Party," a wing co-opted by the astroturfers like Dick Armey and Tim Phillips.

That "tiger" Gregory is talking about is nothing more than just that, their base and that "problem" he's acknowledging is that these wingnuts aren't going to care much for governing if or once they get elected. This "Tea Party" has managed to get the media to pretend like they're some new party instead of a problem for the Republican Party, since they're moving them way to the right when they were too far to the right already.

Since the media have now decided to re-brand them as something separate from the Republicans, it looks like they've won the PR war with the corporate media. No shock there, but every once in awhile they let one slip and tell the truth like Gregory does here. These teabaggers are a force within the Republican Party and anyone who pretends like they're not is either willfully ignorant or lying.

h/t Kathy

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