The sad, sad fate of the Tea Party movement, Exhibit A

Q: What's the difference between Scott Brown and Dede Scozzafava?

A: Just having an "R" next to his name is enough for the Tea Party "leaders" who told us Scozzafava was the AntiChrist (here, for example, is a typical St. Louis Tea Party GOP sellout whine for Brown).

Somewhere in America, there may be a candidate whose very bones scream "Establishment Squish!" more loudly and shrilly than Scott Brown's ... but I wouldn't bet on it.

Here's a summary of Brown's big-government record from Small Government News (hat tip -- Aaron Biterman).

And just for giggles, here's his latest faux-populist on the one hand, "please, please, please mistake me for Mitt Romney" on the other, ad (hat tip: The Other McCain, who has apparently fallen for the Brown schtick):



Scott Brown is the measure of how far the Tea Party movement's standards have fallen -- or how much tighter the GOP's stranglehold on it has become -- in just a few short months.

The measure of whether a particular Tea Party group is still viable and honest is a simple one: Have they told sad sack GOP hack Brown to go pound sand and thrown every iota of their support to Joe Kennedy? If so, they may be legit. If not, they're nothing but fraudulent GOP astroturf.