CSPAN-3 right now: bunch of old white guys and a few white women spewing random words in front of the Capitol.

It is interesting. The speakers step up and show outrage, while those behind him/her are laughing or giving high-fives.

They just asked the protesters to visit their representatives: at their office, not in the capitol building.

It's a shame what GOP primaries do to some people.

Of course, they do it to themselves. The GOP has quite consciously fed and nurtured the ignorance of the people now tea-bagging for decades. Crist is even now giving them more power and credibility than they have or deserve by caving in to their fiscal stupidity. I know you were being sardonic but it needs to be clarified as often as possible that the GOP is being attacked by their own whipped and abused dog.

The pride the Republican base takes in losing is difficult to understand. You would think the NY-23 story would be a cautionary tale about the need to keep the base under control.

Of course, this is similar to what's going on in Pennsylvania among the Democratic primary candidates -- the progressive candidate is pulling the conserva-Dem to the left.

However, unlike in Florida where the ultimate winner of the Republican primary is likely to be out of step with Florida voters, the Democratic primary is likely to help Pennsylvania's primary winner in the general.

Sure 'Sozzafava' is a verb now, but ultimately doesn't it's definition include losing the race?

Seems Phyrric, to me.

The greening of the brownshirts

The Palin/Beck party is vying to be born...
With its cleft palate and all 47 chromosomes...

The scary question is:

Can an ardent 23% of the population, whose voices will be amplified way out of proportion by Murdoch's vast media empire, control the country?

Betting on voters forgetting your previous positions is probably not all that risky a strategy in Florida!

Since I don't watch Fox News, I have to ask: do these people KNOW they lost the Scozzafava skirmish? Maybe Beck and Hannity are telling them they won.

Gak. The stupidity is nauseating.

Jonah Goldberg this morning: time to give *real conservatism a try, because it isn't that hard right policies don't work, rather, it's that they've never been properly implemented.

Funny, that's what the communists on campus used to say back in the 80s if you expressed any concerns about how well it was working in the USSR, the East Bloc or Cuba. :)

Poor Charlie. Basically a decent man trying hard for his state. Too bad he has been so badly served by the party that is utterly opposed to good, well managed government.

reality notwithstanding

I'm not sure that I've ever read a more succinct summary of today's GOP.

-Z

This business of 'Scozzafava-ing' people brings to mind a situation I endured back in the 90's. I was an engineer at the time, and our division found itself in the thrall of a golden-tongued snake-oil salesman who would rattle off buzzwords in no particular order during meetings, leaving our (not so bright, but flattery-vulnerable) management breathless with admiration. Inevitably some nonsense project or other would spin off from our hero's words; the project would be hailed as cutting-edge and prophetic! It would then eat its way through the entire burden budget for the year, and ultimately fail. One by one, the cooler heads in the division - those who would say, "But really, what does that MEAN? What is it we're supposed to design?" - were picked off. Our snake-oil salesman rose higher and higher in the division, while the rest of us went on to other jobs and careers. In fairly short order, of course, the division failed, Mr. Golden-tongue was fired, and my former employer no longer operates in that particular arena.

The parallel here is that no one in a position of authority ever seemed to notice that those genius burden projects were LOSERS!

So, I say to those crazies lining up behind Palin and Bachman: carry on.

Supported the President's stimulus package?! He's got a BIG problem on his hands with that one. At least he's not gay...uh-oh!

The tea bagger protest. It looks like the snuck the dementia patients out of nursing home. I can't believe they they (dick Army or whoever is behind all of this) can really think this is a winning strategy. It looks buffoonish. A handful of bitter old white racists is not going to resonate over a huge mult-cultural nation. The strategy behind this just eludes me.

What is sad is that I don't think it will get him anything with those guys. They will see if for what it is and sneer.

at TPM: "...in the crowd Boehner is speaking to, there's a rally poster with images of corpses from Dachau denouncing "National Socialist Health Care."

They're fighting the civil war all over again, and instead of educating (literally, leading to light) the delusional, their craven, irresponsible "leaders" are throwing fuel on the fire. It's worrisome.

If memory serves a few years ago the minority Arab Sunni Muslims running Iraq were put out of power. The Shia minority got the vote. The Sunni minority couldn't admit to themselves that they lost at the polls fair and square. They complained that the Shia must have cheated.

There is something about old men that have previously been in power that makes them unable to admit that the world has changed. The angry old white men of the tea protest movement wants their country "back" but that country isn't coming back.

Crist may have have more things to worry about than mere teabags.

Crist's strategy seems really stupid to me. Isn't he better off showing off his moderate cred, in a state that went for Obama? Surely the teabaggers in Florida don't outnumber the rest of the Republicans.

Ron Byers -- the problem, at its heart, is that a black man is president and pointing the way to a more open and progressive future; that is what these folks can't wrap their heads around.

"Surely the teabaggers in Florida don't outnumber the rest of the Republicans." bobbo @ 3:06 PM.

The conventional wisdom is that a primary campaign will usually have far fewer voters participating that a general election, although I'm certain there have been exceptions. That smaller number of voters usually represent the more impassioned, shall we say, voters. As of now the teabaggers are those impassioned voters. Unless Crist can get a larger than usual turn-out on election day, he will stand a good chance of losing the nomination.
Should he survive the primary challenge, however, his odds of becoming Senator are, I believe, decent. Much depends on how far to the right he tracks while attempting to gain that nomination...

the question is, did blitzer challenge him on blatantly lying?