The funniest part of this is that even now, after more than two years of heavy breathing from liberal media about how extremely extremist those extreme tea partiers are, the Democratic brain trust still needs a heads up on how properly to smear budget-cutting conservatives. I always figured they just committed a bunch of pejoratives to memory during their orientation as members of Congress for use forevermore: “Extremist,” “radical,” “fringe,” “dangerous,” “heartless,” and of course old reliable, “out of touch.”

At least we know now, though, why Schumer’s considered a likely eventual successor to Reid as majority leader. Evidently, he’s “the smart one.”

Um, Senators, ever heard of the mute button?

Moments before a conference call with reporters was scheduled to get underway on Tuesday morning, apparently unaware that many of the reporters were already on the line, Charles Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, began to instruct fellow senators on how to talk to reporters about the contentious budget process.

After thanking his colleagues — Barbara Boxer of California, Ben Cardin of Maryland, Tom Carper of Delaware and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut — for doing the budget bidding for the Senate Democrats, who are facing off against the House Republicans over how spending for the rest of the fiscal year, Mr. Schumer told them to portray John Boehner of Ohio, the Speaker of the House, as painted into a box by the Tea Party, and to decry the spending cuts that he wants as extreme. “I always use the word extreme,” Mr. Schumer said, “That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.”

Actually, I was wrong about this being the funniest part. The funniest part, as you’ll see if you follow the link up top, is that they then proceeded to mindlessly repeat the “extremism” talking point as if no one had heard what Schumer had said — even though everyone clearly had. Ah well. If they were good at thinking on the fly, they’d have real jobs. Speaking of which, the lamer-than-lame spin from Schumer’s spokesman afterwards: “There’s nothing wrong with reporters overhearing him calling the House Republicans’ extreme because that’s what it is.” Even the spokesman can’t resist robotically repeating Pee Wee’s secret word of the day. Good lord, it’s enough to make one long for the creative boorishness of Anthony Weiner.

Exit question via Ace: If they’re hammering the “extremism” message this hard, they must really be digging in for a shutdown, huh?