Let’s recall that the post-Obama ‘tea party movement’ was launched in Feb. of 2009 by a wealthy commodities trader and CNBC analyst named Rick Santelli with a ‘spontaneous’ TV rant against deadbeats who supposedly bought homes they couldn’t afford — no mention of the banks pushing bad mortgages on people to fatten up their fraudulent investment packages.

Incredibly, when Santelli ‘spontaneously’ called for a tea party rally in Chicago, a website had already been set up and the name, Chicago Tea Party, registered.

You wrote: “And yet the Tea Party turned to the GOP for hope, shelter and consolation.”

Not quite the case. It seems the tea party movement was a creation of the corporations and their shills like Santelli to serve the interests of the corporations, the rich and the GOP, but it got out of hand when amateurs became involved by forming their own ad hoc groups unaffiliated with the ‘official’ tea party movement. Some of these ad hoc groups specifically did not want to support or condone either party, but those were the types who have since been driven out or compromised.

Aside from that, most of the Teabaggers are fundamentalist Christians, (I know: I’ve been having a running debate with one for months), and that rigid uber-religiosity could never square with the tolerant, open-minded views of progressives. (Could you really comfortably work with someone who didn’t think women should have equal rights with men? Who believed gays were tools of the Devil and had a ‘secret agenda’ to make their kids gay? Who believed progressives want to turn the nation over to radical Muslims to impose Sharia law? Who thought FDR and JFK were communists? Who believe we could have won the Vietnam War except for the ‘dirty hippie’ protestors? Who thinks Obama was born in Kenya?)

I don’t know how many Teabaggers you know, nor how close you are to them, but there’s one more thing that stands in the way of any rapprochement between Teabaggers and progressives: the alarming ignorance of most Teabaggers regarding history, science, politics, and most everything else, including their own religion. Many of them are convinced, for example, that this country was founded as a Christian nation and that their interpretation of Biblical law should be imposed. They also insist ‘war is the answer’ when dealing with other nations, and don’t bother speaking softly first, just use the ‘big stick’ to bring them into line. Do you really think you could work with someone like that, no matter how sincere they were about the issues on which you agree?

You might recall that, back in the ’80s, the left-wing group Women Against Pornography joined with fundamentalist right-wing Christians to pass anti-pornography legislation in Minnesota. WAP thought they were promoting a law that prevented the exploitation of women. The fundies, however, the moment the law was passed, tried to use it to close down gay and lesbian bookstores and places that made birth control info available. This is the danger of — excuse the pun — getting in bed with the Teabaggers, and the reason I don’t see any realistic chance of unity between Teabaggers and progressives.