Our favorite MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann promised viewers a special comment on the Tea Party tonight. Never one to do things half way, Olbermann tweeted on Monday: “A little Twitter bonus. That Tea Party Special Comment I just promoted for Wednesday’s show? It’ll be approximately 20 minutes long.”
Just in case you couldn’t clear your schedule for the evening, I’ll be live-blogging the show from The Daily Caller offices.
8:20 p.m. – As if we weren’t amped enough already, Olbermann tickled our curiosity right before going to commercial break. Apparently, “It’s worse than we thought.”
8:40 p.m. – And here we go. After trashing Karl Rove (bloodsucker) and Glenn Beck (chicken little) and comparing the Tea Party candidates to “moderately talented actors” at a Comedy Club on Improv night asked to play on the absurd premise of running for congress, Olbermann shouted a rallying cry: “Vote backward, vote Tea Party!” and launched into a highlight reel of Tea Party gaffes, candidate by candidate.
8:46 p.m. – Basically, Tea Party candidates don’t like abortion (Sharron Angle, Nevada’s Republican candidate for Senate) or separation of church and state; they love tax loopholes, hate social security, and think unemployment and Medicaid are unconstitutional (Republican Senate candidate in Alaska Joe Miller…even though his wife and family all receive those government benefits).
More things will be unconstitutional if the Tea Partiers are elected because they want to take a scissors to the Constitution. They hate the Seventeenth Amendment (direct election of Senators), and want to get rid of it. Angle wants to trash the Sixteenth, which gives government the right to levy taxes. Rand Paul, apparently, wants to get rid of the Fourteenth Amendment so that people can ban blacks from the premises.
Immigration means anchor babies pre-programmed to blow things up, according to Louie Gohmert, congressional candidate in Texas. Arizona’s Republican Governor Jan Brewer, à la The Sixth Sense, sees “headless bodies in endless desserts”
Christine O’Donnell, always a favorite, thinks she’s in on top secret memos about China, and that China is trying to take over the US.
Also, Tea Party candidates hate reporters: Joe Miller had reporters arrested, New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino kicked a reporter off his press list (the horror!), O’Donnell went off at a radio station for filming her interview.
A gem about Marco Rubio, the Republican candidate for Senate in Florida: “I don’t know that any of his opponents has ever accused Mr. Rubio of not loving his country. He just doesn’t love a lot of its people.”
Tim Walberg, a Michigan congressional candidate, wants to blackmail Obama into showing his birth certificate to Rush Limbaugh by threatening to impeach him.
8:55 p.m. Still following? That was kind of a whirlwind and we’re worried we may have missed some of the finer points about who hates whom and doesn’t believe in what. But it was worth the wait: after the deluge of information, Olbermann turned to his real message:
“You are willing to let these people run this country?” he demanded of his audience, angrily. “These are the kinds of cranks, menaces, mercenaries, and authoritarians you will turn this country over to?”
The Tea Party, he said, is trying to “establish a kind of theocracy for white males.” They are crazy: “They see delusions, specters, fantasies.”
“They want to make the world safe for Bernie Madoff,” he added.
8:58 p.m. – Olbermann reaches a fever pitch, urging his viewers to action.
“If you sit there…and let this cataclysm unfold, you have enabled,” he said passionately. “This is the week in which the three card monty dealers hope to take over the government.” He called Tea Partiers “agents of regression, repression, and corporate sovereignty,” and, reminding us of those moments when our parents were not angry, but worse, disappointed, he told his viewers that they had to make time this weekend to “canvas, vote, phone, even drag to the polls,” anyone and everyone to vote for even the “most tepid of the non-insane candidates.”
In case he hadn’t quite gotten his point across, Olbermann concluded by quoting two Tea Party candidates: Sharron Angle and Stephen Broden, congressional candidate in Texas, on 2nd amendment rights. Apparently, people may yet use those “Second Amendment remedies,” as Angle phrased it, if the government continues the way it has been going for the past two years. Broden tempered a similar statement, saying, that’s obviously “not the first option.”
It was too much for Olbermann. “Thank you!” he burst out. “The attempt to overthrow the government of the United States by violence is not the Tea Party’s first option! Next Tuesday is the first option!”
After a last exhortation that his viewers take action, he ended on a sober note, his energy exhausted.
“Good night, and good luck,” he said solemnly, and the camera panned to a very sad looking Rachel Maddow, likely smarting, we learned minutes later, because she did not get an interview with Olbermann’s favorite Tea Partier, Sharron Angle.