Fare thee well, teabaggers

Ah teabaggers, your time in our political discourse was too short. It seems only yesterday you were getting angry about taxes you didn't understand, then morphed into hating a health care bill you didn't understand, filling your protests with racist signs, misspelled placards, Hitler caricatures, and messages about socialism, the Constitution, the founding fathers, and communism that showed you didn't understand any of those concepts either. Who can forget how you were completely co-opted by the Republican, right wing media, and corporate establishment?

Then there was the whole part where you seemed to embrace every weird birth certificate and ACORN conspiracy that could be conceived and then dragged the Republican party into a frothy rage of hate, obstruction, and insanity that might terminally harm the party. We aren't so miffed about that last one.

And how can we forget the entire industry of scrotal and ball dipping jokes that the unfortunate moniker you chose opened up? Truly it was the golden age of testicle jokes.

But now you're dead, having utterly failed at your mission to stop health care and complain about the tax cuts Obama gave you. You're left to go home, rage about government in private, and reap the benefits of cheaper more accessible health care that you didn't want. Maybe we'll see you co-opted again and used to oppose regulatory reform, climate action, or a jobs bill, but it just won't be the same.

So until some of your loopier members stockpile enough guns to stage another Ruby Ridge or go back to Minnesota's 6th District to run for re-election, we'd just like to salute you. The way you made it seem like the only opposition to health care was lacking sanity and the way you made it so no one who wanted reform had to ever enter into a real health care debate, just rebut crazy shit like death panels, was a tremendous boon to reform.

Farewell and adieu, teabaggers. We'll see you on the rainbow bridge. In memoriam the Daily Show has put up a greatest hits of your exploits and their mocking of your exploits.