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On the same day that a poll found that many Republicans did not know where Benghazi was even though they considered last year's terrorist attack there to be the biggest scandal in American history, tea party leader Dick Armey confused the city with the country of Bangladesh.

Fox News on Monday invited Armey, who was ousted as chairman of FreedomWorks last year, to weigh in on the news that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had improperly scrutinized tea party groups to determine if they had abused their tax-exempt status.

"You have to understand that this is a politically-mandated suppression of the expression of resistance to big government," Armey explained. "I'm amazed that anybody would be surprised that this was happening."

"It's a debilitating stupidity on their part. When the real professional really undercovers [SIC] a serious transgression against the law by somebody they won't now be able to prosecute it in an orderly fashion because they biased the case against themselves."

Fox News host Gregg Jarrett pointed out to Armey that the White House had insisted that it was surprised by news that the IRS was targeting tea party groups.

"I imagine that they probably don't know any more about that than they do about Bangladesh or any number of other things," the former House majority leader quipped.

"You mean, Benghazi," Jarrett observed.

"The White House is a beautiful example of being capable of hiding your hands," Armey continued. "First they throw the ball through your window, then they hide their hands and pretend they know nothing about it. Of course, the White House knows about it. They are the most ruthless politicians I've ever seen in America."

A survey released by Public Policy Polling on Monday found that 41 percent of Republicans believed that the alleged Benghazi cover up was the biggest scandal in American history. The poll also found that 39 percent of those people did not know that Benghazi was located in Libya.

Bangladesh is located in South Asia, about 6,000 miles from Benghazi.

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Chris Matthews actually tried to get a coherent response out of now ex-chairman of the astroturf FreedomWorks about why Republicans claim to be the party of small government, but they can't seem to keep themselves from inserting government into women's reproductive health or from hating on gay people and insisting that they can't get married. Armey's response was to basically fling as much poo as he could find in the direction of the other party and say "but the Democrats...":

Armey acknowledged there had been several “foolish mistakes” the GOP made during the campaign season, including Mitt Romney’s remarks about the 47%. He insisted the party was trying to “rediscover its relationship” with constitutional limitations on big government and fiscal responsibility.

Host Chris Matthews asked why, if the Republicans are really the party of limited government, does the party have its candidates trying to get rid of contraception, and outlaw gay marriage and abortion. “Why don’t you stay out of people’s lives if you really wanted limited government?” asked Matthews.

The former lawmaker insisted that there were simply a few bad apple candidates, just like the Democrats have “had a few rather strange people,” too. When Matthews pointed out the GOP platform includes items about personhood and contraception, Armey insisted the Democrats also have “unusual” and “strange” items in their platform.

“Name one,” Matthews challenged.

“Homosexual marriage, all right. Abortion on demand,” Armey shot back. “These issues are in your platform. You don’t think it’s strange for these issues to be in your platform pointing in one direction, but you consider it outrageous that the other party has the same issues pointing in the another direction in their platform.”

Matthews responded, “The Democratic party generally supports Roe vs. Wade. It does not support ‘abortion on demand,’” adding the issue of gay marriage is going to be decided state by state, not nationally.

Matthews tried to get Armey to dish on FreedomWorks a bit more, now that he's taken the $8 million golden parachute of a retirement they paid so they could be rid of him, but Armey didn't have much to say on that front and was still trying to pretend that they're some grassroots movement -- and not a rebranding effort to get the Bush-stink off the word Republican. Driftglass has more on that and Dick Armey from back in 2010 here.

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I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed watching Joan Walsh get a chance to give Dick Armey his due after the way he treated her on Hardball back in early 2009. While discussing the mess over at FreedomWorks, which Karoli already wrote about here, Walsh called Armey and his fellow astroturfers exactly what they are -- a bunch of grifters.

Matthews took issue with the description, but I'd say Walsh is spot on. Armey and his ilk have lined their pockets, nicely extracting money from their rich backers and from those naive enough to actually believe that this so-called "tea party" is a grassroots movement, instead of what it actually is: a rebranding effort to get the Bush stink off of the label Republican.

Unlike Matthews and his producers, who seem more worried about trying to book Armey and Kibbe as guests on his show, his colleague at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow called out Armey among a host of others who are getting rich off of these con games earlier this month. Karoli wrote about that here: Rachel Maddow Slams Conservative Fox Commentators and Other Right Wing Scammers and MSNBC now has the transcript up for that show as well.

Rachel doing what she does best, going into the thicket of details of how conservative groups purportedly there to support conservative causes are more often just a means to line the pockets of a few select individuals. In this case, Maddow details the Dick Morris/Newsmax unholy alliance which looks illegal but probably isn't; the Dick Armey/Matt Kibbe/FreedomWorks scam; and the Mike Huckabee effort to defeat Obamacare with monies from the unsuspecting. That many of these individuals and efforts are related to Fox News should surprise no one.

Rachel Maddow reviews the many ways the conservative movement is rife with scammers more interested in making a buck off the fear and paranoia of conservative media audiences than they are in crafting cogent political arguments.

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Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey on Thursday argued that guns should not be regulated after the massacre that killed 12 and wounded 58 in Colorado because the suspect could have "taken a car and driven it into a school bus" -- and firearm restrictions would be like taking away football scholarships to punish a school for misconduct.

During an appearance on CNN, host Soledad O'Brien asked Armey if he agreed with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's assertion that the way to prevent future shootings like the one in Aurora was to change "the heart of the American people" instead of tighter controls on firearms.

"We've got a culture right now that seems to say, let's control the guns and have all kinds of laxities and forgiveness and understandings and so forth for the people who hold the guns," Armey said.

But O'Brien pointed out that the Aurora shooting couldn't be blamed on a laxness on criminals because the suspect had no criminal record.

"People might say that it was the easy accessibility for someone who wanted to amass, stockpile weapons over a short period of time to plot out a mass shooting and that should be blamed," the CNN host told Armey.

"If in fact he had not been capable of acquiring the guns, he might just as well taken a car and driven it into a school bus," the tea party leader replied. "You can't focus on the object by which a destruction was committed -- be it a hammer, a gun, a truck, a car. Focus on the aberrance in the individuals that do this."

"Why not do both?" O'Brien wondered.

"More people are killed in automobiles every year than they are guns," Armey insisted. "I don't hear anybody talking about banning automobiles."

"But they say you have to wear a seat belt, right?" O'Brien noted.

"Whatever," Armey quipped.

"Got to have a driver's license," a member of CNN's panel pointed out from off camera.

At that point, Armey gave up on the car metaphor and fell back to a Second Amendment argument.

"We are guaranteed by the United States Constitution a right to bear arms," he explained. "To trespass that right against those innocent people because of the aberrant behavior of others is not acceptable. It's like telling -- taking away scholarships of future football players for the bad offenses of a past football plan."

"Stay focused on the perpetrators and get tough on the perpetrators. Let people know there are awesomely difficult consequences that will come to you for your perpetration and they will perpetrate less."

According to the National Rifle Association, Colorado does not require a permit to purchase the assault-type AR-15 rifle that was used in the Aurora massacre. Rifle owners are not required to be licensed and rifles are not required to be registered in the state.

Cars, however, must be registered and drivers are required to be licensed and insured.

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As we already saw with the "class act" of Dana Loesch's husband Chris and Fox contributor Steven Crowder and their sorry, racist excuse for what's supposed to pass for a "rap" video, the real wingnuttery at CPAC this year was with the panel segments as opposed to just the general contempt for liberals and horrid policy prescriptions being offered by the headliners.

Case in point, this panel as described by the CPAC web site -- Tea Party versus Occupy:

Unlike their leftist counterparts in the “Occupy” movement, Tea Party activists do not need to be paid or coerced into advancing their ideas, free market activists said during one of the closing panels at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

Dana Loesch, Editor-in-Chief of BigJournalism.com, told audience members that progressives operate from a false assumption that says Tea Party activists will not demonstrate without offered some kind of inducement. In reality, she said, they actually describing themselves. Occupy members who were demonstrating outside of the CPAC conference in D.C. acknowledged that were being paid $60 to be there.

“It always amazes me how progressives think that conservatives can’t get organized or demonstrate without getting paid,” Loesch said. “They do it for free because they believe in it.”

Amy Kremer, chair of the Tea Party express, said that the movement she was identified with has more staying power because it has the right ideas. By contrast, the “Occupy” movement has resorted to unsavory tactics and has already lost credibility with the American people.

There's a bit more there, but they somehow forgot to mention this gem from panelist and Americans for Prosperity Pennsylvania State Director Jennifer Stefano:

STEFANO: The one thing I get asked is, what is the difference between the tea party and Occupiers... but I always say one thing. If you're standing in a room and you're not sure how to separate the tea partiers from the Occupiers, do one thing. Raise an American flag. The tea party will stand and put their hands over their heart and pledge to it while the Occupiers deficate on it.

I find that really humorous since the only person I seem to remember being proud of "dropping trou" lately, was her cohort on that panel, Dana Loesch.

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I don't know if anyone else is as sick of the Tom Brokaw/Chris Matthews consecutive book tours that we've got going on at MSNBC along with a couple of other networks, but this bit from Tuesday's Morning Joe where Brokaw was pushing his book along with some Villager conventional wisdom about what needs to be done to cure our country's ails left me feeling even more disgusted than I was with him after his appearance on Meet the Press this past Sunday.

The amount of cognitive dissonance necessary for either Tom Brokaw to make these statements in the first place, or the viewers that he thinks should be buying into his clap-trap here is really quite astounding.

After being asked by Willie Geist about American's “incredible levels of cynicism in government” and our Congress' nine percent approval level rating, and how some faith is potentially restored in our government, Brokaw responds this way.

BROKAW: Well again, it really requires the citizenry from the ground up to get involved in reclaiming their government. I've used this almost everywhere I go as an example. However you feel about the tea party, they got angry. Then they got organized. Then they got to Washington and they stayed disciplined and they were having an affect, out of proportion to their numbers, frankly, in the Republican debate.

But that's a demonstration of organization and power. And the other things is that I think both parties have to look at the enormous impact of big money on politics. K Street and the lobbyists and they're in there all day, every day.

Brokaw is apparently either completely detached from the reality, or just doesn't mind lying to the viewers since he's willing to ignore the fact that the “tea party” AstroTurf movement has been organized and co-opted by... lobbyists. Dick Armey... lobbyist. Matt Kibbe... lobbyist. Tim Phillips... lobbyist. And there are a lot more there where I could go on and on with who's pumping money into this “tea party”, another of which is one we've covered here extensively, the Koch brothers.

If Tom Brokaw honestly thinks that lobbyists have too much influence on our government, then the last thing he should be doing is trying to paint the “tea party” as grass roots and a cure for getting the influence of money out of politics.

After poo-pooing agriculture subsidies as one of the problems we have with lobbying groups having too much influence, which I do not disagree with by the way, Brokaw went on to champion our government having more “public/private partnerships” and used examples such as privatizing our schools, roads and water districts.

So Brokaw thinks we need to get rid of the influence of lobbyists in our government, but doesn't seem to mind so much the commons and institutions that should belong to the taxpayers being sold off to private industry so they can make a profit off of them.

This was followed by him talking to billionaire Mort Zuckerman who was touting his usual lines about how Washington is broken and complaints that there's not enough upward mobility in the United States any more, of course ignoring the fact that trickle-down economics, a race to the bottom on wages and labor protections due to globalization, lack of regulation of the financial industry among a host of other issues are what brought us to where we are now.

Nothing like MSNBC getting the opinion of one of the “little guys” like Zuckerman to let everyone know what the opinion of the one percent is so they can have a “fair and balanced” discussion on Morning Joe. So much for that "liberal" MSNBC. A lot of MSNBC's programming is really horrid but if there was ever one show anyone could consider pre-packaged for Fox and ready to move directly over there, Morning Joe definitely qualifies.

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After some typically dismissive coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protesters, Fox News Watch panelist Alan Colmes got into a somewhat heated exchange with conservative columnist Cal Thomas for the way Fox has been supportive of the so-called "tea party" while attacking the kids out there protesting on Wall Street.

When Thomas tried to claim that the "tea party" was actually a grass roots movement, Colmes jumped all over him and asked him about the big money behind those protests from the likes of the Koch brothers and Dick Armey's group among others.

Former Iraq invasion cheerleader Judith Miller wrapped up the segment by agreeing with Thomas that the movement started as grass roots, but also admitted that it had indeed been taken over by the Koch brothers and their ilk. Sadly no one had a chance to point out to her that the co-opting happened immediately and that the "tea party" would never have spread as widely as it did without the support of those AstroTurf-ers and the likes of Fox News and CNN supporting them with wall to wall coverage -- unlike these OWS protests that the media did their best to ignore for the first several weeks.

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Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) has pledged not to run for president in 2012, leaving former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) unimpressed with the remaining Republican candidates.

"We have about 2 million activists across the country, and frankly we're disappointed," Armey told CNN's Candy Crowley Sunday. "Now, obviously, we'll have to start looking, and I was just saying this morning maybe it's time to start drafting Paul Ryan."

"We understand the fiscal crisis of this nation and this nation's government faces is so acute that somebody's got the stand up and take on the big issues. Paul Ryan has done that."

He added: "I have said for years on, for example, the subject of medicare. It's always a debate that's governed by Republicans that don't dare and Democrats that don't care, and at least now we have a Republican that dares. He needs to be applauded, encouraged, and his work needs to be appreciated as serious professional work."

The FreedomWorks tea party organizer also suggested that he wasn't worried that future seniors might have trouble paying for insurance if Republicans are successful at enacting Ryan's plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system.

"I'm perfectly capable of having my own health insurance, that which I've had all my life," Armey said. "Paul Ryan is doing more to save grandma's health care than anybody I know right now because Medicare is going to go bust and bring the government to going bust if it's not attended to, and he ought to be applauded."

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After Newt Gingrich came on Meet the Press last week and had the unfortunate circumstance of finding out what happens to any Republican who dares to tell the truth about Paul Ryan's budget plan, Ryan got a chance to respond this week. Apparently Ryan hasn't figured out yet that his plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system or going after Social Security isn't going to be popular with the voters, ever. Ryan is delusional enough to believe that somehow the Republicans are going to be able to "move the polls" on the issue.

He also agrees with Freedom Works Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe that "entitlement reform" or a.k.a. dismantling our social safety nets should be a litmus test for any Republican running for office in 2012. I find it astounding that they actually think jumping off that cliff together is a good idea.