The Liberal Synonym Finder

Bob Shrum calls current Supreme Court a "Tea Party Supreme Court." This level of cluelessness is perhaps why this guy has such an abysmal campaign record.

Let's review. The four meaningful changes to the Supreme Court in many many years have been the additions of Justices Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor and Kagan. Only two of these were appointed subsequent to the rise of the Tea Party as an obvious force in American politics - Sotomayor and Kagan. It is hard to reconcile the addition of the Wise Latina and the Harvard Law Honcho with what the Tea Party stands for (Taxed Enough Already). Furthermore, Justices Roberts and Alito were nominated and elevated to the SCOTUS prior to anyone in America ever having heard of the political movement now referred to as the Tea Party. These are traditional, constitutionalist justices appointed by a conservative President who said he'd appoint traditional, constitutionalist justices. Shocker, I know. The only even remote sliver of a thin reed of an inkling of an argument that you can make along Shrum's line is that Alito's appointment was the result of a mulligan when Bush originally appointed Harriet Miers. Miers was such a poor pick that reeked so foully of cronyism and patronage taking precedence over the best interests of the country that even conservatives and Bush loyalists rose up out of sheer disgust. This "rising up" - the spontaneous roar of disapproval at the arrogance and disconnectedness of power - is the only remotely plausible Tea Partyish thing that can be pinned upon the current make-up of the SCOTUS.

So Shrum has just about every fact and element of logic standing against him, but that is not the point. For Shrum and his ilk, "Tea Party" is an adjective, and not a positive one. He wants to say "crappy" or "sucky" or "f**king gawdawful" or something along those lines, but that's not politically nuanced or coded enough for his pay grade. So he gets out his leftist Synonym Finder and under "sucky" he finds "Tea Party." Thus we have a Tea Party SCOTUS that has absolutely zero connection or origin in the Tea Party movement.