WHAT?  YOU MEAN THEY'RE NORMAL PEOPLE?  MY PILLS!  QUICKLY, MY PILLS! – AT 8:50 A.M. ET:  There is shocking news to report.  Please sit down.  American pollsters – not connected with any foreign government, oil company, or failing cable network – have concluded that tea party people are normal.  Andrew Malcolm of the L.A. Times's Top of the Ticket blog, has the story:

Now, comes a pair of polls, including Gallup, that paint a revealing detailed portrait of Tea Party supporters in most ways as pretty average Americans. A Sunday poll -- actually three national phone surveys of 1,000 registered voters -- found that 17% of all polled, or more than 500, called themselves "part of the Tea Party movement."

"It's a good sample size," David Winston, polling director of the Winston Group that did the poll for an education advocacy group, told the Ballot Box blog of The Hill newspaper.

The Tea Party adherents broke down 28% independent, 17% Democrat and only 57% Republican.

You mean, they aren't fascists.  It's a crooked poll.

A new Gallup Poll out this morning of 1,033 finds nothing fringe about self-proclaimed Tea Party adherents; they are slightly more likely to be employed, male and definitely more conservative. But otherwise Gallup's Lydia Saad writes, "their age, educational background, employment status, and race -- Tea Partiers are quite representative of the public at large."

COMMENT:  Do these results mean that Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews have to banish themselves to Venezuela and join the Caracas Foreign Legion?  Let us hope so. 

I wonder how much these polls will be quoted today by the mainstream media.  Don't hold your breath.

April 5, 2010