Over at Big Government, tea parties organizer Dana Loesch offers "Its a Wrap: The Most Underreported Stories of 2009" [sic; URL at 1] which, among others, contains this jaw-droppingly stupid paragraph:

The most misreported and misunderstood thing about the tea party is its political leanings. The tea party has no political leaning. It stands straight for limited government, low taxes, and liberty for all. Disagreement with those tenets is an accidental admission of socialism on the part of the antagonist. The beauty of the tea party movement is that it is independent and thus a true check and balance of the Republican and Democrat parties. It’s not a pawn of the GOP, thus untouchable in criticism of the Democrats – I view it as an unattached conscience of the Republican party.

Obviously, the second sentence is false, whether she means "political" in the sense of ideology or in the sense of party. The parties don't stand straight: they lean towards the right and towards the GOP (or libertarianism). That's akin to liberals who refuse to see liberal bias in the media. If she does in fact believe what she's saying it's yet another example of tea party solipsism. Their far-right ideology (at least on economic matters) isn't far right because they're at the center of the universe.

Then, of course, it's her "you're either with us or you're against us" moment, where she says that anyone who doesn't support her far-right economic policy is a socialist. Michael Bloomberg? Socialist! Mike Huckabee? Socialist! George W Bush? Socialist!

There are plenty of Reds under the GOP bed, but also across America. Dozens of millions of Americans, when informed of the tea party ideology and what it would result in would oppose them. And, they're all socialists.

The bottom line is that the tea parties are a loud fringe group of low-wattage loons. Andrew Breitbart is smart enough that he's probably laughing at them behind their back even as he prints their unhinged screeds.

10/11/10 UPDATE: Dana Loesch is the new editor at Breitbart's Big Journalism, so I guess I'll have to retract the sentence directly above.

[1] biggovernment.com/2010/01/01/
the-most-underreported-stories-of-2009