Dana Milbank

You can always count on the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank to carry the water for the DNC.

Back during the 2008 presidential campaign Milbank made several, later discredited attempts to characterize Sarah Palin’s campaign rallies as gussied up Klan rallies where reporters were routinely roughed up with the help of the Secret Service:

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

Looks like Milbank showed up Rahm Emanuel’s strategy session this week, because he has reached into his bag of tricks to smear the Tea Party rallies.

Organizers of the conservative protest were told at the last minute that they didn't have a permit to dump a million tea bags in the square, as they had planned.

Instead, they served up a rather noxious brew.

"Hey Big Brother: Show us Your Real Birth Certificate," said one sign in the rain-soaked crowd.

"Blackbeard Obama, King of the Tax Pirates," said another.

A third showed the president dressed up as Steve Urkel, the nerdy black kid with big glasses and suspenders from "Family Matters." "Did I do that?" the sign said, showing a graph of the economy plunging.

Closeted racists and crakpots, that’s the Rahm Emanuel’s meme for the day, and you’d better play along lest you get a talking to by the CEO of GE.