The staples of Gingrich’s repertoire -- aggressive rhetoric, intense self-regard, historical pomposity, and organizational chaos -- were on full display. “In his world, the government is sovereign, and we are merely subjects,” Gingrich said of President Obama. “In our world, we are citizens, and the government is our servant.” He even tried his hand at a bit of theology. “All of us are flawed,” Gingrich noted when a journalist asked about his well-documented personal foibles. “The belief that only one person was perfect, and that was Christ” encapsulates “the heart of Christianity,” he affirmed.

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The film's producers have released an apologetic press release explaining what went wrong:

The 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, is known in philosophical and political circles for presenting a cogent argument advocating a society driven by rational self-interest. On the back of the film's retail DVD and Blu-ray however, the movie's synopsis contradictorily states "AYN RAND's timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice comes to life..."

Did you spot the error there? Rand's Objectivism is staunchly opposed to "courage and self-sacrifice," along every other essential component of basic human empathy, because it is a philosophy for angry teenage boys who imagine that they're intellectually superior to everyone around them.

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FRC lauds Walsh for his "unwavering support of the family," by which they don't mean his family, because obviously his support for them has been known to waver. But supporting one's actual children is less important, to Tony Perkins and his organization, than Walsh's steadfast belief that the government's sole responsibility is to ensure that life is as difficult and miserable as possible for women and gay people.

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After all, if there's one GOP candidate (besides Jon Huntsman) whose nomination the Tea Party supposedly can't abide, it's the formerly pro-choice and pro-gay rights architect of what amounts to the ObamaCare prototype. (The news today that Romney's Massachusetts healthcare law apparently provides some care for illegal immigrants will only strengthen this perception.) In 2010, the Tea Party united behind unknown, underfunded gadflies and derailed well-credentialed candidates like Romney in several high-profile primaries. If the GOP presidential race was being held back then, the thinking goes, surely Romney wouldn't have received the pass he now seems likely to get.

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Alas, probably not. Ever since Richard Nixon won his reelection victory in 1972 by appealing to many of the discontented populists attracted to George Wallace, the Republican Party, formerly a party of big city boardroom types and small-town Rotarians, has been based at least in its rhetoric on right-wing populism. The Tea Party movement is merely an extreme exaggeration of the mainstream GOP.

But the Democrats since George McGovern captured the party’s presidential nomination in the same fateful year of 1972 have been the opposite of a left-wing populist party. Thus while right-wing populism reinforces the existing Republican story about America, any genuine left-wing populism would challenge the basic constituencies and values of the McGovern-to-Obama Democrats. There are six reasons in particular why Democrats are unlikely to benefit as much from populism as Republicans.

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Some argue that the Articles of Confederation created a federal government that was too small and weak, but in fact the primary problem with the Articles was that they were far too left-wing. Government bureaucracy killed nearly 2,000 soldiers at Valley Forge. It was apparent that a change was needed!

While planting some hemp one day, George Washington discovered an early draft of the Constitution, written in ancient Egyptian on a series of golden plates buried deep within the ground at Mount Vernon. James Madison translated and elaborated on the text, with the help of Thomas Jefferson and an angel. The excited Founders immediately called for a Constitutional Convention to officially ratify the document and formally make America the best country ever.

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Welcome to America at the edge of insanity, where even the most innocuous items are now considered diabolical threats to the culture.

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But in recent weeks a nasty court fight between Walsh and his ex-wife, who alleges that he owes $117,000 in back child support for their three children, has spilled into public view. The story got us wondering: How do Tea Party types who supported Walsh in 2010 feel about the allegations?

So far, they're either withholding judgment or giving Walsh -- who ran on a family values platform -- the benefit of the doubt. His campaign platform spoke of "traditional marriage" and referred to the family as "the core unit which determines the strength of any society."

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According to CNN's polling director, this split "effectively boils down to the century-old contest between the conservative and moderate wings of the party." But that doesn't seem quite right.

While the data does show that there are some clear differences between Tea Party and non-Tea Party Republicans, it's hard not to conclude that Republicans generally share a thoroughly conservative political philosophy. Consider some of the areas where the two groups are fairly similar:

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Think Progress revealed some of the invitees to one of last year's meetings.. Increased awareness of the role the Kochs play in our national politics led to protests at the February retreat, which was suddenly guarded by hired goons. (Right-wingers decried these protests as assaults on the civil liberties of the Kochs and their billionaire friends.)

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The Newsweek Michele Bachman cover posted newsstand sales no higher than most other Newsweek covers. The "crazy eyes" cover moved 47,225 copies, according to Newsweek, though AdWeek says other industry sources say it sold somewhere between 35,000 and 48,000. Is that good? Well, "the magazine's single copy sales averaged 46,561 per issue in the first half of 2011."

We are talking only about newsstand sales, not total circulation, but this does mean that Bachmann's incredibly controversial and very buzzy crazy eyes did not "move the needle," as annoying people say. Of course, the actual article about Bachmann, inside of the eye-grabbing cover, was pretty bland. But since when does the quality of the journalism have anything to do with newsstand sales?

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He said his $174,000 salary is not so much, considering the hours a member of the House puts in, and that he had to sever ties with his family business in Panama City. Southerland also said there are no instant pensions or free health insurance, as some of his constituents often ask him about in Congress.

Median income in Southerland's district: $34,718.

(And the health insurance isn't "free," but it is high-quality group private insurance with relatively cheap plans subsidized by Southerland's employer, the federal government. And he'll qualify for the pension in a couple of years, if he's reelected.)

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Think Progress links to the words of NOAA administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco:

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"I'm not ruling anything out," Wurzelbacher told The Ticket in an interview Thursday. He added that he thought it was an "interesting idea" and that people have been asking him to run for office since he confronted Obama four years ago. He's spent much of his time since then on the speaker's circuit, he said, encouraging others to run for office.

"I like the idea of it -- just regular Americans running. If a regular guy runs, right away the media's going to attack him," Wurzelbacher said. "What kind of education does he have? What does he know about this? My answer to that is, regular Americans aren't experts, but dammit, look where the experts have gotten us. Maybe we need some regular guys in there. That's what I've been doing the past two and a half years, just encouraging regular Americans to run. Tell the liberal media to go to hell and I don't care what you guys say about me, I'm going to try to fix this country."

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George Allen, the former senator from Virginia notable primarily for being as casually racist as a senator from Virginia twice his age, is running for Senate again. Erickson initially opposed Allen, preferring a more Tea Partyish challenger named Jamie Radtke. Then he stopped mentioning the Radtke campaign, and then he didn't invite Radtke to his "RedState convention." He explained why in an email:

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But Hatch got out of it! Somehow, against all odds, Rep. Jason Chaffetz decided not to run against Hatch in 2012, after going so far as to hold town halls outside his district to gauge support for a run.

Hatch's poll numbers had begun to crawl up, though, and Chaffetz decided his sure-thing reelection was safer than battling an entrenched million-term senator.

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Not surprised? Neither was I, but the research is actually fascinating. Putnam and Notre Dame's David Campbell tracked the role of faith and politics for their last book, "American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us." They went back to look at attitudes toward the Tea Party among 3,000 survey respondents for the paperback edition, and wrote an Op-Ed in Wednesday's New York Times.

Some of their key findings: "Even compared to other white Republicans, [Tea Party backers] had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do." They're not a product of the Great Recession, Campbell and Putnam write. "Many Americans have suffered in the last four years, but they are no more likely than anyone else to support the Tea Party." Big government isn't the issue that drives them: "Concern over big government is hardly the only or even the most important predictor of Tea Party support among voters." They are social conservatives who believe religion should play a strong role in politics: 76 percent said our "laws and policies would be better if more elected officials were deeply religious."

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During the ensuing general election campaign, a video from 1999 emerged in which O'Donnell told Bill Maher that she "dabbled" in witchcraft in her youth. The Tea Party candidate, fearing that this might alientate her Christian support base, quickly released a video in which she stated, "I'm not a witch." The comment invited a wealth of media mockery (and an SNL spoof -- see below).

In her new memoir, "Troublemaker: Let’s Do What It Takes to Make America Great Again," O'Donnell expresses regret over the video. According to the AP, she writes, "It was a wrong-headed move, made for all the wrong reasons, but it was mine." O'Donnell also blames an insistent media consultant for pushing the idea.

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This seems -- at first glance -- like a very risky selection. Democrats hope to use the super committee to pursue a more "balanced" approach to deficit reduction, but they'll need at least one of the Republican members to join them. And if you examine his full career, the 58-year-old Upton, who was first elected to the House in 1986, is exactly the kind of Republican appointee Democrats have been hoping for -- an authentic political moderate who has regularly broken with his party and its leadership through the years. Did Boehner just make a big mistake?

Hardly. Upton's story actually illustrates perfectly why hard-line conservatives have nothing to fear -- and why meaningful compromise with congressional Republicans is essentially impossible in the current climate.

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