Howard Dean Says Tea Party “Not Playing With Full Deck.” Tea Party Goes Nuts.

Tea Party supporters went nuts after hearing Howard Dean this morning say the Tea Party is “not playing with a full deck.” Dr. Howard Dean, the former Vermont Governor and former Democratic presidential candidate, today on Morning Joe also said that in the 2012 election, the Tea Party “could go off the rails.” Dean suggested the Tea Party might stay home on election day. Later, failed and former GOP Chair Michael Steele disagreed with Dean on the fact that poll numbers find Americans believe the Republican Party is obstructionist, then — in typical Steele mode — said the numbers didn’t matter. Just like those numbers on the GOP balance sheet at the end of Steele’s tenure at the RNC…

The Hot Air bloggers went nuts. Jazz Shaw via Twitter wrote, “Howard Dean has apparently crossed that dark river from confused to delusional and deranged,” which fellow Hot Arian Ed Morrissey retweeted, adding, “Again? Or still?”

Mark Finkelstein at NewsBusters — part of Brent Bozell‘s faux journalism watchdog empire — wrote,

Bulletin from the Bureau of Pot-Meet-Kettle: Howard Dean has declared that Tea Party Americans “are not playing with a full deck.”  This not merely from the man who made The Scream famous, but who in the very same segment today had a manic tongue-sticking-out moment that might have scared pets and small children.

For the record, here’s Dean’s full comment:

I think Romney has a problem, though. He’s by far the best known candidate in the race, and he’s at 17% in the polls. That’s not so good. If he gets the nomination — and I think the odds now are very heavy that he will — he’s got a big base problem. And usually that’s not a problem. Republicans are very disciplined, they’ll pull in behind him. Actually, even the Democrats pull in behind after a fight like this. This year you have the Tea Party. They are not playing with a full deck. I mean, they could go off the rails here. This is going to be really interesting. They might sit home, or vote for somebody else, or find a Libertarian, or Ron Paul might do something. Who knows?

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