The Poison Tea Pot Award for Smearing the Anti-Obama Rabble

“Tea Party budget-slashers....were like cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive. They were like vampires, draining the country’s reputation, credit rating and compassion. They were like zombies, relentlessly and mindlessly coming back again and again to assault their unnerved victims, Boehner and President Obama. They were like the metallic beasts in Alien flashing mouths of teeth inside other mouths of teeth, bursting out of Boehner’s stomach every time he came to a bouquet of microphones.”

Host Piers Morgan: “Where is the similar mob to Mussolini’s and Hitler’s in the modern democratic era?...The Tea Party?”

Ann Coulter: “No. No, no, no.”

Morgan: “The nearest thing to it in America?...Are you wild about them?...The Tea Party?”...

Coulter: “Oh, yeah, I love them.”

Morgan: “See, I don’t really get that....I don’t get that because you’re a smart cookie....You’re intelligent. You live a provocative life.”

Coulter: “I believe you’re insulting the Tea Partiers.”

Morgan: “Well, they’re not among the brightest of spellers, are they?”

Co-host Matt Lauer: “When you look at some of the things the Tea Party and others on the far right are asking for — no funding for Planned Parenthood, no funding for climate control, public broadcasting — does it seem to you, Senator, that this is less about a fiscal debate or an economic policy debate and they are making an ideological stand here?”

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer: “That’s exactly right, Matt. You’ve hit the nail on the head.”

“Some people say that the Republican Party has been held hostage by the Tea Party. One of our Facebook followers sent in an interesting analogy and said, ‘Why are Republicans allowing freshman congressmen to control this debate?’ and this person said, ‘It’s like letting the teenager in the family run the family budget.’ I mean, there’s some truth in that.”

“All of this, of course, is if you get what you want in a highly toxic atmosphere, and it sure looked to me from the outside like you went into the debt ceiling fight thinking, ‘Surely they will do the statesman-like thing. Surely they won’t go there.’ And it seemed to me as if Speaker Boehner was coming to you saying, ‘Look, if it were up to me, we would do this, but I’ve got this membership problem.’ And they went there, and now that marks our politics.”