70%

So 70% of tea-partiers polled are against the Ryan plan that decimates Medicare and Medicaid.  And yet these are the same disgruntled yay-hoos who stapled tea-bags to their caps and imagined themselves revolutionary activists as they rolled their four-wheel "Rascals" into assorted town halls, screaming about socialism and "Obamacare" and Hitler.

The greatest trick the conservative movement has managed to pull off is convincing these sad, scared folks to vote against their own interests.  Preying on the American idea of exceptionalism that presumes every one of us has the gumption and pluck to become gazillionaires.  And wouldn't it be a bitch if, when we climb that glorious fiscal mountain, our maximum tax rate was a Draconian 39% as opposed to 35%.

Or even worse, that a poor family might get food stamps off the sweat of our fevered brows. The horror, the humanity...

I would actually feel sorry for these dupes, except their selfishness and self-righteousness makes it a little hard to summon up sympathy.  That, and the fact that their ignorance has given us a House of Representatives as dysfunctional as the scattered neurons in the average tea-partier's brain...