How Roy Blunt Proved that St. Louis Teabaggers are Unprincipled Astroturfers

As I wrote a week ago, the St. Louis Teabaggers held a rally at City Hall purportedly for the purpose of calling all "real Republicans" to renounce the candidacy of Dede Scozzafava. They said they were calling on Republicans to "put up or shut up," and specifically called out Roy Blunt when they said:

we are coming for you.

and

we will vote you out! We will come at you with so much heat, you won't even know how to handle it!

I was skeptical at the time, and I said it would be interesting to see whether the tea party actually "put up or shut up." Well, they failed miserably in their over-the-top threats to Republicans, and not just because their campaign managed to lose a House District to a Democrat that Republicans have held for over a hundred years (NY-23).

First of all, let's just start with the fact that Roy Blunt embodies absolutely none of the values traditional conservatives claim to endorse. He's as much of a D.C. cocktail party insider as anyone can get. He loves government pork barrel projects as long as they help his friends. And, for goodness sakes, he cheated on his wife with a lobbyist! In other words, he is the exact opposite of any ideal the Tea Party claims to stand for.

Not only that, but Blunt has a primary challenger, Chuck Purgason, who is a legitimate conservative. He's opposed to earmarks. He's opposed to having family members be lobbyists. He was opposed to TARP. And most importantly in this context, Purgason but not Blunt endorsed Hoffman and even donated money to Hoffman's campaign. In other words, Purgason did exactly what the teabaggers were asking, while Roy Blunt completely ignored them.

Yet despite all of this, there has been absolutely no mention of Purgason's campaign on either Bill Hennessy's or Dana Loesch's blogs. If they are truly committed to only having "real conservatives" running for office, why would they completely ignore the only actual conservative in the Senate race? Why would they support a candidate that anyone from either party would agree is your typical D.C. politician only out for himself?

The reality is that Hennessy and Loesch won't attack Blunt because they are just like Blunt. They see an opportunity to further their own careers by playing a certain part in the media and systematically deceiving the people who read their blogs. If they make a claim that turns out to be false, they'll just ignore it and move on to the next scandal. They talk all blustery and angry to try to rile up their supporters, but they're not really willing to take on any powerful members of the GOP. They picked NY-23 for a reason; because it was far enough away that they knew their political theater wouldn't have any real effect on the local business-as-usual Republican Party.