That sentiment was expressed in a post today on RedState. The Twitter account of the publication also tweeted this: “It Is Time To Burn Mitch McConnell In Effigy. He Goes Pontius Pilate On the Debt Ceiling.”

Here is McConnell’s plan, as presented to The National Review:

The initial legislation would authorize the President to submit a request to Congress asking to increase the debt limit by $700 billion, and would require submission of a plan to reduce spending by a greater amount.

Upon receipt of the President’s request, the debt limit would be provisionally increased by $100 billion to provide breathing room and avert an August 2nd default.

The House and Senate would have 15 days to disapprove of the request.

Within three days of the President’s request, it would be in order for the House and Senate to introduce a joint resolution disapproving of the President’s request.

Under expedited consideration of the Resolution of Disapproval, the resolution would be placed directly on the Senate calendar; the Motion to Proceed to the resolution would be privileged; there would be 10 hours of debate and passage would require a simple majority.

If either chamber defeats the resolution, the remaining $600 billion increase would be allowed.If both chambers pass the resolution, it would be sent to the President for a veto or signature.

If vetoed, debate on an override would be limited to one hour.

If the veto is overridden (which would require a 2/3 vote) in both chambers, then the request would be denied and the provisional $100 billion increase revoked.

If the veto is sustained in either chamber, the remaining $600 billion increase would be allowed.

For the second and third requests in fall 2011 and summer 2012, the President could request an increase of the debt limit by $900 billion once the Treasury Department determines that the country is within $100 billion of the debt limit. The President would also be required to submit a plan to reduce spending by a greater amount.  Each of these subsequent requests would be subject to the same disapproval process outlined above.

Congress has until August 2 to act before the U.S. defaults on its debt obligations. For a quick primer on the subject, click here.

It is absolute and utter nonsense. This contest is not in the least bit a race between the tea party and the establishment and the only people who think it is are the people who’ve sat inside Washington, D.C. all year licking their chops waiting for a Republican Civil War.

This. Is. Not. It.

This is a matter of who would be the best face for the GOP to explain their positions to those not of the GOP and Tea Party. It is also a matter of showing the GOP is serious about cutting spending. That is why Jeb Hensarling will probably get it.

We all know and love Michelle Bachmann, but while she is one of the best at firing up the base, she is not necessarily the best at explaining GOP policy to a media typically hostile to the GOP.

I think Erickson is probably right. While the news has been flush with stories about the leadership battle, eagerly talking up the potential for a rift between the Tea Party the GOP establishment over the issue, I haven’t seen much evidence that Tea Party groups are getting up in arms about the issue. That’s not to say that the budding factions might not clash on all sorts of issues down the road — just that this one might not be one of them.

The New York Times obtained a draft of a confidential memo to be distributed to all incoming House Republican lawmakers, in which Armey and FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe tell lawmakers that working to repeal health care reform is “nonnegotiable,” and they’ll become the target of a major backlash if they don’t succeed in doing so.

“Politically speaking, your only choice is to get on offense and start moving boldly ahead to repeal, replace and defund Obamacare in 2011, or risk rejection by the voters in 2012,” Armey and Kibbe wrote.

Meanwhile, Erikson wrote yesterday, “We have a significant opportunity to improve the Senate GOP through some primaries [in 2012],” and he provided a list of all the Senate Republicans up for re-election in the next cycle:

John Barasso (WY)
Scott Brown (MA)
Bob Corker (TN)
John Ensign (NV)
Orrin Hatch (UT)
Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX)
Jon Kyl (AZ)
Richard Lugar (IN)
Olympia Snowe (ME)
Roger Wicker (MS)

Note that this is just the list of Senate Republicans running. Not all will be targets, but it will be from these men and women that the tea party movement starts looking for targets.

Now, before you all get giddy about Olympia Snowe, I would respectfully suggest that Corker, Hatch, Hutchison, Lugar, and Wicker make better targets as we have a much greater certainty of both beating them in primaries and also winning the general election.

Wicker and Corker in particular make exciting prospects for the tea party movement.

At this point, the aforementioned writings represent idle threats and not any sort of movement with real popular backing. But with the experiences of their successfully primaried colleagues like Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah), Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) fresh in the minds of most Republican congressmen, such threats might be enough to keep them marching in lockstep with the Tea Party’s demands throughout the next legislative session.

The video does seem to show Valle getting up close and personal with the open window of Paul’s car with her sign, but that’s about all I can make out of it. I don’t think this changes the overall circumstances of the incident, nor does it seem to shed new light on stomper Tim Profitt’s strange new demand that Valle apologize to him.

An isolated incident in a small city government election? Hardly, notes Fox News, which trots out its favorite former Department of Justice lawyer Hans von Spakovsky, now a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, to comment:

“Absentee ballots are now the weapon of choice for people who want to commit voter fraud,” said Hans von Spakousky, a former Justice Department attorney who monitored voter fraud. “Campaigns will order absentee ballots and then follow the postman door to door on the day they are delivered to pick them up and control the vote.”

“Any time you get large numbers of absentee ballots being issued, it should be taken as a sign that trouble is brewing,” he warned.

The story is already getting churned up on right-wing websites with other incidents concerning possible phony voter registration forms in Harris County, Texas, and dire warnings that many states have not sufficiently purged their voter rolls of dead people. RedState, for instance, expounds upon the threat posed by absentee ballots:

Some of the tactics employed in voter fraud and perpetrated by individuals associated with a special interest supporter of a candidate include Pressuring and coaxing first-time voters or those who were “less informed or lacking in knowledge of the voting process, the infirm, the poor, and those with limited skills in the English language” to vote by absentee ballot; Paying voters in cash for casting absentee ballots; Instructing people applying for absentee ballots to phone the candidate’s campaign when the applicant received his or her ballot so that the candidate’s supporters could go to the applicant’s home and “though not authorized by law to do so, ‘assist’ the voter in completing the ballot;” Illegally keeping a stockpile of unmarked absentee ballots and delivering ballots to voters; Lying about whether the person applying for an absentee ballot would in fact be absent on the day of the primary.

All these hypothetical scenarios represent legitimate issues of concern that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent should they occur, but aside from reports out of Daytona Beach and Harris County, it’s hardly clear how “rampant” this phenomenon is, or, for that matter, what kind of impact a couple hundred dead people being left on a state voter roll or a couple dozen absentee ballots being stockpiled by a city commissioner will have on the outcome of the impending midterm elections. It’s worth noting that these stories, intended to stoke fears of stolen elections, are often linked to districts with a high percentage of minority voters.

It’s strange, to say the least, to lump Geithner among any group of lefties attempting to “community organize” anything. For the last year and a half, progressive groups have fretted that he cared more about helping out his old friends and associates on Wall Street than boosting employment through large fiscal stimulus programs.

In theory, one can see a stance where the left and right might meet over their anger towards Geithner, but it would have to come from a decidedly anti-Wall Street agenda. Boehner, on the other hand, is better known for calling for the repeal of financial reform legislation meant to reel in Wall Street, so it’s hard to tell what position he’s coming from.

None of this, however, has stopped Erick Erickson, founder of RedState, from launching a mini-campaign of his own today around Boehner’s idea:

The other day in Ohio, House Republican Leader John Boehner said Mr. Obama should fire Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and economy adviser Larry Summers.

I agree. But what do Democrats in Congress think? Back in 2006, Democrats were demanding to get Republicans on the record about whether President Bush should keep Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense.

It’s time to turn the tables. Go get your congress critter on video. Ask if he agrees with John Boehner that Barack Obama should ask for Tim Geithner and Larry Summers’ resignations.

Oh, and if you get your congressman to take a position on the Ground Zero Mosque, you just might get bonus points and maybe an extra prize!

Post your video to our Facebook page. Each person who does so will get a copy of my new book.

It seems unlikely that “fire Geithner and Summers” will become a popular rallying cry in November, but stranger things have happened. They’re approximately the least radical members of the administration, and their abrupt departure would only lead to a destabilization of the stock market.

Credible rumors are circulating in Pennsylvania that should Tim Burns, an outstanding candidate, get the Republican nomination for the special election, Russell would try to go Doug Hoffman and rally people against the establishment. Were this true, it would be unacceptable as Tim Burns is stellar. None of this is intended to slight Bill Russell or the admirable service he has rendered to this country. Rather, it is an expression of our judgment that Tim Burns is the better candidate to run a post-Murtha campaign that will encourage the voters of Pennsylvania’s 12th District to think positively about the future and the Republican party.

My story here.

An official in Marion Co. (IN) tells Hotline OnCall d’Ippolito turned in just 3 signatures in the 7th CD, the district with the highest percentage of Dem voters. The noon deadline has passed, meaning d’Ippolito failed to meet the requirements to get on the ballot. She would have been required to submit 4,500 signatures, including at least 500 from each of the state’s 9 districts.

If she falls short in just one district, she’s off the ballot. It’s been a bad afternoon for d’Ippolito backers, who thought just an hour ago that she had a chance. Still, Erick Erickson of RedState tells me it was worth the effort.

“It was worth it just to freak out the Democrats,” said Erickson. “The reality is the information got on the radar late on the holiday before the noon deadline in the middle of a snow storm. But Proctor & Gamble is sponsoring the Olympics, so I’m happy to boost Pepto-Bismol sales.”

It’s an interesting statement, especially for the focus on how craziness can blow back onto the rest of the conservative movement. Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos has long banned conspiracy theorists, but that has not stopped the occasional anti-Zionist diary from appearing on the site, generating a ton of comments and being used against Kos and allies as “representative” of the left.

The whole statement:

We’ve always banned truthers at RedState. Increasingly, we have also banned a number of individuals who think Barack Obama is disqualified from being President because despite the Republican Governor of Hawaii confirming the legitimacy of the Democratic President’s birth origin as a citizen of the United States.

Today I want to reaffirm and make it more definitive. If you think 9/11 was an inside job or you really want to debate whether or not Barack Obama is an American citizen eligible to be President, RedState is not a place for you.

Birfers and Truthers are not welcome here. Period. End of Story.

But I want to expand on this too.

The tea party movement is in danger of getting a bad reputation for allowing birfers and truthers to share the stage. At the National Tea Party, Joseph Farah treated the birfer issue as legitimate. In Texas, tea party activists have rallied to Debra Medina who, just yesterday, refused to definitely dismiss the 9/11 truther conspiracy as crackpot nonsense. If a candidate cannot do that, we cannot help that candidate. It’s that simple.

So we arrive at one of those moments where I am fully prepared to part ways with the individuals and groups willing to share the stage and treat as legitimate the crazies who believe the President was born in Kenya, the crazies who believe our government was complicit September 11th terrorist attacks … two groups, incidentally that increasingly overlap.

This sets us up for attacks from the left and from within that we must anticipate. It is one thing to separate ourselves from these individuals and groups. It is quite another to know that these people are among us. We should be careful. All of us have an obligation to vet those who we ally with. Just because someone is stridently against the size of government does not make him an ally if he also believes the U.S. Army blew up the World Trade Center. Such a person brings disrepute on us all, deservedly so.

On the other hand, it may not be known that someone is a birfer or truther. We should be willing to show each other good grace and a measure of understanding in dealing with the troublesome fringe. We should also remember it was the Clintonistas who started the birfer rumor and the most vocal truthers live in Hollywood and voted for Obama. That is not, however, an excuse for us to associate with the nuts.

The media never runs stories about the Communist Party USA’s routine pronouncements in favor of Barack Obama. The media has never run legitimate stories about Barack Obama’s ties to the communist oriented New Party in Chicago. Obama gets a pass even on radicals whose support he personally solicited and those he personally befriended for years. But the moment a birfer opens his mouth and spouts his stupidity from the stage of a tea party rally it becomes headline news on every news network. Complain all you like that that’s not fair, but it’s the world we live in.

We must be vigilant. We must be willing to draw a line in the sand and stand against fatuous nonsense that opens up the right to attacks by a left-leaning media intent on embarrassing the good people who have developed through the tea party movement a renewed sense of civic involvement.

Birfers and Truthers have no place among us. And they are most decidedly not welcome at RedState.

This sets us up for attacks from the left and from within that we must anticipate. It is one thing to separate ourselves from these individuals and groups. It is quite another to know that these people are among us. We should be careful. All of us have an obligation to vet those who we ally with. Just because someone is stridently against the size of government does not make him an ally if he also believes the U.S. Army blew up the World Trade Center. Such a person brings disrepute on us all, deservedly so.

I’d add that “birthers” often encourage members of the U.S. military not to serve under Barack Obama — it was the saga of a military contractor, Stefan Cook, that pushed the “birther” conspiracy theory into the headlines.

The minor embarrassment for Tea Partiers was the campaign of Adam Andrzejewski, a first-time politician who spoke at an April 15, 2009 Tea Party and sold himself, explicitly, as that movement’s candidate.

In the final week of the campaign, he got the same sort of full-court-press boost from online conservatives that Scott Brown did in Massachusetts. RedState claimed that Andrzejewski’s internal polling showed him 2 points down, in striking distance for the win. Gateway Pundit, among other bloggers, scorched the media for not covering Andrzejewski’s 11th-hour endorsement from former Polish president Lech Walesa. On election night, HotAir illustrated its Illinois primary thread with a picture of Andrzejewski, making it clear that he was the movement’s candidate.

Andrzejewski wound up in fifth place out of seven candidates, with 14.4 percent of the vote. Somehow, Illinois voters were able to resist this.