"'Don’t Tread on Me'? 'Don’t Laugh at Me' is more like it."

And the Tea Party folks certainly don’t seem to possess sufficient sophistication to win anything. According to The Wall Street Journal, a Tea Party candidate for Senate in Indiana named Richard Behney damaged his campaign when he blurted out to some of his followers that he was “cleaning my guns and getting ready for the big show” in the event that the government did not control its spending. Smart.

What the Tea Party really offers is the helpful service of putting a human face, as it were, on all the diffuse, complex rage against President Obama. Pundits can use them to quantify all the anger and unrest out there. They’re racists, concludes the ever sanctimonious Frank Rich, and you come away from one of his complacent squibs feeling that you’ve met the enemy, had him analyzed and explained to you, and now you—and all decent-minded people—have your work clearly cut out for you.

Perhaps, though, all the media attention paid to these political Keystone Cops is precisely because they are so bumbling and ineffectual. The very description of the expressions of their rage makes us reassured that there is no real power behind it. If these are the forces ranged behind the attempts to repeal health-care reform, we can be sure that health-care reform is safe and sound.