Over the past four years, political pundits (especially on the right) have been hailing the Teabaggers as some great new force in American politics. But it was obvious to most of us from the very beginning that the Tea Party wasn't a new movement at all -- it was just a convenient rebrand of the GOP rump in the wake of the catastrophic failures of the Bush/Cheney administration.

Either way, the Tea Party is toast.

Views of the Tea Party movement are at their lowest point ever, with voters for the first time evenly divided when asked to match the views of the average Tea Party member against those of the average member of Congress. Only eight percent (8%) now say they are members of the Tea Party, down from a high of 24% in April 2010 just after passage of the national health care law.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 30% of Likely U.S. Voters now have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party. Half (49%) of voters have an unfavorable view of the movement. Twenty-one percent (21%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

By comparison, 36% of Americans have a favorable view of socialism.

It will be interesting to see if opportunistic Republicans like Marco Rubio who jumped on the Teabagger bandwagon start to distance themselves from these people.

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What's really amazing about this segment is how seriously Uma Pemmaraju of Fox News talking head takes this whack-a-doo. It's really something.

For those who don't know him, Cary Wise and his fringe, nutball organization are promoted on right-wing hate sites like Stormfront (not going to link, Google it). Yet he's treated with the utmost respect on Fox, as some kind of credible figure.

So please, can we stop with the MSNBC/Fox News comparisons?

Can you imagine a the leader of an organization dedicated to overthrowing the US government and replacing it with a Marxist dictatorship being granted a similar interview on MSNBC? I can't either.

All you really can say is: facepalm.

There are a lot of reasons Congressional Republicans are less popular than syphilis, and Michele Bachmann is certainly one of them.

Matt Lewis, who we've previously caught accusing "liberals" of trying to strangle Marco Rubio and struggling with the definition of irony, just can't fathom Nancy Pelosi passing a bill with mostly Republican support.

Except for the fact that she did.

Now everyone makes mistakes, but you'd think someone who's paid to write about politics would know stuff about politics. Or at least consult the Googles.

By the way, Lewis (@mattklewis) blocked me on Twitter after I pointed this out to him the other night (wingers are so sensitive!) -- so please direct any of his future SRWTs to @BlueTexanTweets.

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Man, this Republican Civil War stuff is getting really tasty. Here's former Speaker Dennis Hastert on Brian Kilmeade's Fox radio show, unloading on John Boehner for breaking his "majority of the majority" rule:

Maybe you can do it once, maybe you can do it twice, but when start making deals when you have to get Democrats to pass the legislation, you are not in power anymore…When you start passing stuff that your members are not in line with, all of a sudden your ability to lead is in jeopardy because somebody else is making decisions. The President is making decisions, Pelosi is making decisions, or they are making the decisions in the Senate. All tax bills and all spending bills under the Constitution start in the House. When you give up that responsibility you really give up your responsibility to govern, and that is the problem.

Shorter Hastert: I got your bipartisanship right here.

Remember this the next time some right-winger laments that the Democrats or Obama "won't compromise" or "refuses to work with Republicans." And no, Pelosi didn't run the House this way when she was Speaker.

It's worth remembering that Hastert presided over the catastrophic Republican losses in the House in 2006 -- so I'm not sure why any Republican would listen to him about anything. But I hope this wingnut-on-wingnut sniping keeps up, because it's really making for an enjoyable New Year.

Over the past four weeks, we've highlighted four contenders for the Stupidest Right-Wing Tweet of 2012, and our fifth and final entry today is from Fox News' clown Steven Crowder, who is deeply confused about basic American history.

Now, I've read a lot of wingnut revisionism about the American Revolution, but I'd never seen the British Empire under King George III described as "socialist." The Founding Fathers, don't you know, fought the American Revolution over his oppressive universal healthcare system and tyrannical welfare programs.

So, to review, here are the other four finanlists.

Peggy Noonan

Eric Cantor

John Hawkins

Michelle Malkin

Vote now!

Quick quiz. On January 2011, just two days after Jared Loughner killed six people and wounded 14 -- including US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords -- with a Glock semiautomatic, Putz took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to:

a) argue for bans on semiautomatic guns
b) propose measures that would prevent mentally ill individuals from acquiring firearms
c) call for greater security for members of Congress
d) complain that Democrats were saying mean things about Sarah Palin and the GOP

If you guessed "D" -- you're right!

Well, he's at it again -- this time in USA TODAY. And in the wake of this shooting spree -- a massacre which took the lives of 20 children -- Putz is mostly outraged that "liberals" are saying mean things about the NRA.

Is Hate A Liberal Value? A 20-year-old lunatic stole some guns and killed people. Who's to blame? According to a lot of our supposedly rational and tolerant opinion leaders, it's . . . the NRA, a civil-rights organization whose only crime was to oppose laws banning guns. (Ironically, it wasn't even successful in Connecticut, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation.)...Calling people murderers and wishing them to be shot sits oddly with claims to be against violence. The NRA -- like the ACLU, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers or Planned Parenthood -- exists to advocate policies its members want. It's free speech. The group-hate directed at the NRA is ugly and says ugly things about those consumed by it.

What's funnier here? Calling the NRA a "civil-rights organization" or comparing it to Planned Parenthood? I mean, one of those groups makes millions lobbying and shilling for gun companies and the other is a non-profit that provides affordable health services for women. See? Same thing!

Also hilarious: Putz writes that "Things Aren't Really That Bad" while simultaneously arguing that we need armed guards in every elementary school in the United States.

Every Friday until the end of the year, we're counting down the stupidest right-wing tweets of 2012. Next Friday, we'll post all the contenders so you can vote on the stupidest. So far, we've heard from Nooners, Eric Cantor and John Hawkins.

And today, the Anchor Baby.

It's arguable that Mitt Romney lost election the moment his now infamous remarks, in which he basically called half the country freeloaders and victims who want free stuff, went viral. Even most Republican pundits were appalled, and saw right away that serious damage had been done.

But to the True Believers like the Anchor Baby (and others) -- this was a clarifying moment, one to be embraced. Victory was surely around the corner -- calling half the country parasitic victims is electoral gold! As I wrote at the time,

It's almost as though Malkin and her ilk really believe that the GOP's path to victory is to win 140% of the wingnut vote.

Pretty much.

Memo to Republicans: please keep heeding Michelle Malkin's advice. Thanks!

It's been evident for quite some time now that the Republican Party has completely gone over the bend. Their most popular leaders and media figures are reviled, and they've lost 3 out of the past 4 national elections.

But after President Obama was re-elected, Republicans blamed the lost "message" and that Romney was a poor candidate (and that ACORN stole the election).

Wrong, says this new CNN poll: it was the issues.

Just over half the public says that the GOP should give up more than the Democrats in any bipartisan solution to the country's problems, according to a new national survey.

And a CNN/ORC International poll also indicates that a slight majority of Americans sees the Republican party's policies and views as too extreme, a first for the GOP, and fewer than a third say they trust congressional Republicans more than President Barack Obama to deal with the major issues facing the nation.

53% to be exact. And that's not surprising at all since on just about every issue -- from taxes and gun control to global warming and gay rights -- the GOP holds fringe, unpopular views.

This is another good reason for the President to hold firm on the budget negotiations. People don't like it when you give in to extremists.

Frankly, I'm a little surprised it took wingers quite so long to dust off the "shooter's probably a leftist trying to make gun owners look bad" take. Yet another sign that they're just off their games since losing to the black guy again.

Then again, Bob "Confederate Yankee" Owens (who also writes for a gun porn site called Shooting Illustrated) has never been the sharpest tool in the shed.

And notice: one of the RTs below is by Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds, who is -- in the wake of the black guy winning again and the Newtown shooting -- growing more and more unhinged by the second.