The GOP has finally made an honest movement out the Tea Party, giving the go-ahead for Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Glenn Beck's illicit fantasies) to form an official Tea Party caucus.
The lawmakers -- about two dozen, according to the Washington Post -- held their first meeting yesterday, and wouldn't you know who joined up: Kansas Senate candidates Jerry Moran and Todd Tiahrt, continuing their game of Anything You Can Do I Can Do Righter.
It was another step in the pair's awkward dance, where Moran keeps leading but they both just keep stepping right. And it was another odd moment for the Tea Party and Republicans, who even as they came together kept denying they were together. They're like a couple caught in the act who insist they're just friends, only they wear boring suits and think you're a socialist.
From the Post's Dana Milbank:
There and then -- on the Capitol grounds 104 days before the midterm elections -- Tea Party activists and Republican officeholders set aside any pretense about the two groups being separate. They essentially consummated a merger: The activists allowed themselves to be co-opted by a political party, and the Republican leaders allowed themselves to become the faces of the movement.Naturally, both protested that nothing of the sort was occurring. "I am not the head of the Tea Party," Bachmann announced as she stood in front of a phalanx of Tea Party leaders. "We are also not here to vouch for the Tea Party."
If you're scoring at home -- presumably by making tally marks with the blood of illegal aliens -- Tiahrt appears to have joined the caucus first, sparking The Hill to report that the caucus was "dividing" the two candidates. But Moran later claimed he had totally joined at the same time, he just didn't make his decision public.
Now boys, settle down: There's plenty of fanaticism to go around.
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