Who'll Get On Board The Michele Bachmann Crazy Train Caucus?

How comfortable can Republicans be with Michele Bachmann's brand new House Tea Party Caucus? (Fringe candidates Rand Paul and Sharron Angle plan to start the Senate branch-- with Jim DeMint-- if they're elected... something that is looking increasingly unlikely as voters start focusing on who these people are and what crazy ideas they stand for.) But in the House it now officially exists. Bachmann (R-MN) started it and Mike Pence (R-IN) was the first kook to sign up; Steve King (R-IA) said he would join (perhaps if he can dress like the Mad Hatter?) And this is one caucus that no one is going to keep Georgia lunatic fringe maniac Paul Broun out of [And, sure enough-- here's Broun making an ass of himself at a Tea Party Caucus press conference a few minutes ago-- guaranteeing that teh Caucus will have as much of a racist component as the overall movement!] The only Democrat endorsed by the Tea Party, Idaho reactionary Walt Minnick, who votes like a conservative Republican and is someone Boehner can always count on when needed, rejected his Tea Party endorsement this week-- the racist thing finally sunk in-- and he was certainly the most likely to make it a bipartisan caucus.

But Bachmann is demanding her House colleagues answer the Bushian questions-- are you with us or are you agin us? Remember, 91 House Republicans voted FOR Bush's no-strings-attached Wall Street bail out. Can they be in the caucus too. One of the architects of that Wall Street victory, John Boehner (R-OH), has already rejected the notion of jumping on Bachmann's crazy train. The other Republicans who twisted arms after the bill was initially defeated and got the job done for Bush, like Paul Ryan (R-WI) refuse to answer whether or not they will join the caucus. Cantor, one of those bailout boosters-- and one of Wall Street's biggest bribe recipients in history ($4,148,935) says he's thinking about joining. Why would they accept him? This whole crazy caucus thing could be a problem for mainstream conservatives.

Until now, they have had the luxury of enjoying the benefits of tea party enthusiasm without having to actually declare membership. But now that Bachmann has brought the tea party inside the Capitol, House Republican leaders and rank-and-file members may have to choose whether to join the institutionalized movement.

It’s easy to see why some Republicans may be hesitant, even as the tea party itself fights over the sentiments expressed by the movement’s most extreme elements.

The Tea Party Federation expelled its most prominent faction, the Tea Party Express, after a spokesman wrote a racially charged letter framed as a satirical jab at Ben Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The Tea Party Express fired back, with a spokesman calling the decision “arrogant and preposterous.” ...Bachmann’s formation of the new caucus has made her a force to be reckoned with inside the Republican Conference; indeed, at last fall’s tea party march on Capitol Hill, demonstrators yelled out, “Palin/Bachmann 2012.” Partially as a result of Bachmann’s-- and Sarah Palin’s-- star power, nearly a quarter of Americans believe the tea party “will become a viable third party in American politics,” according to a Politico poll released Monday.

Bachmann’s office said it hasn’t worked out many of the details of how the caucus will operate and interact with the tea party movement outside Congress. The group’s first step will be to find members to put tea party “principles into practice,” Dziok said. Its first meeting will be Wednesday.

Lawmakers and aides said there’s room for both the Tea Party Caucus and the conservative Republican Study Committee, whose members quite likely would provide a pool for Bachmann’s group.

Tom Price, a very, very, very far right ideologue from Georgia is the chairman of the extremist Republican Study Group, voted against Bush's bailout and is likely to join the Tea Party Caucus. But some members of the Study Group were pulled in two directions-- huge bribes from Wall Street urging them to vote for the no-strings-attached bailout and fear of the nutroots making them reluctant to do so. Among the members of the Republican Study Group, which calls itself the Caucus of House Conservatives, who took Wall Street's side and voted for the bailout, were John Boozman, the GOP candidate for the Arkansas Senate seat, Spencer Bachus, then chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and one of the biggest boosters of the bailout (and one of the biggest recipients of bankster cash-- the only GOP House member to scarf up more than Cantor, $4,338,674-- corrupt California "conservatives" Gary Miller, John Campbell, George Radanovich, Dan Lungren, Buck McKeon, and Wally Herger, Mary Fallin, currently running for governor of Oklahoma, Pete Hoekstra, running for governor of Michigan, NRCC chair Pete Sessions, Sue Myrick, Lamar Smith, Mac Thornberry, John Kline, Mean Jean Schmidt, John Sullivan, and the plan with the plan (to wreck Social Security), Paul Ryan. These are all Study Group Conservatives who voted for the bailout and who will probably join Bachmann's ridiculous caucus.