Conservatives and liberals alike will find their blood boiling when they watch the following video, in which Keith Olbermann delivers what he calls a “Special Comment” on the Tea Party’s midterm election candidates. In this nearly 20 minute-long segment, the Countdown host recites a long list of the movement’s affronts to progressivism before ending with a plea for all liberals, Democrats, disillusioned Republicans, moderates, and political neutrals to vote against the Tea Party next Tuesday.

It would be impossible to summarize every point Olbermann makes in his passionate speech, since he cites perceived outrages perpetrated by everyone from cable news staples like Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell to more obscure Tea Partiers like Delaware’s Glen Urquhart (who once said, “The next time your liberal friends ask you about the separation of church and state, ask them why they are Nazis”) and Missouri’s Vicky Hartzler, who has spoken out against the same government subsidies that have kept her family farm afloat.

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Still, it is possible to suss out a central thesis

to Olbermann’s address: he calls Tea Party candidates regressive, ignorant hypocrites who rail against government spending while reaping its benefits. As a whole, he says, the group is made up of “unqualified, unstable individuals who will do what they are told in exchange for money and power.”

Olbermann ends the segment with a harsh assessment of the movement, one that its supporters will dismiss and its detractors will cheer:

“You are willing to let these people run this country? This is the America you want? This is the America you are willing to permit? These are the kinds of cranks, menaces, mercenaries, and authoritarians you will turn this country over to?

“If you sit there next Tuesday and let that happen, whose fault will that be? Not really theirs—they are taught that freedom is to be seized and rationed. They can sleep at night, having advanced themselves and their puppeteers, and to hell with everybody else.

They see the greatness of America not in its people, but in its corporations. They see the success of America not in hard work, but in business swindles. They see the worthiness of America not in its quality of life, but in its quality of investing. They see the future of America not in progress, but in revolution to establish a kind of theocracy for white males with dissent caged and individuality suppressed.

“They see America not for what it is or what it can be.

They see delusions, specters, fantasies. They see communists under every bed and a gun in every hand. They see tax breaks for the rich, and delayed retirement for everyone else. They fight the redistribution of wealth not because they oppose redistribution, but because their sole purpose is to protect wealth and keep it where they think it belongs, in the bank accounts of the wealthy.

“… But you know better. If you sit there next Tuesday, if you sit there tomorrow and the rest of this week and you let this cataclysm unfold, you have enabled this. It is one thing to be attacked by those who would destroy America from without. It is a worse thing ot be attacked by those who would destroy America from within.”

Watch Olbermann’s special comment in all its 19-minute, 33-second glory below.
Tags: Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Keith Olbermann