If I understand this correctly, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) isn’t a retrograde, civil-rights-rollback Republican, marching the Old Dominion back to the 19th century. He just has a lot of poorly supervised, retrograde, civil-rights-rollback Republican staffers who keep doing stuff in his name?

A few days ago I mentioned comedian Sara Benincasa’s impersonation of Sarah Palin, which I think is probably superior to the more well-known Tina Fey version. But I was chatting with Benincasa. And I hear she’s now considering rolling out an impersonation of Michele Bachmann.

Now, here’s the question or I guess the quandary she seems to be in. For my money, Bachmann’s sort of the Velvet Underground to Palin’s mass-appeal, poppy success. The real creative force, the true, if under-appreciated, innovator — clearly preferred by specialists and aficionados of The Crazy ™. But certainly less well-known by the masses at large.

So is the web ready for a quality Michele Bachmann impersonation? Is the audience big enough to sustain it? And even beyond that, when I think about it, what are the characteristic ticks and traits it would be based on?

Here’s a new piece by our Brian Beutler I’ve been eagerly awaiting. If you follow political news or watch cable TV, the mood and dynamics of the partisan squabble over financial sector reform couldn’t be more different from that over Health Care Reform. Suddenly that 60 vote filibuster threshold just doesn’t seem to scare Democrats that much. So what’s up? Simple. As much as Dems are eager to pass financial sector reform, the politics of having Republicans go to the mat to defeat it don’t look so bad either.

Mid-rank porn star Stormy Daniels has just announced she will not run for senate this year.

Not since Godzilla did battle with Mothra has there been a fight with quite the potential for spectacle as that between Karl Rove and Michael Steele. We haven’t seen much of it yet. I don’t think I even realized it was happening. But behind the scenes, Michael Steele’s allies say that Rove and his minions are the ones fanning the anti-Steele flames.

Jon Stewart to Fox News: White House officials “are not secret Muslims — they’re nerds.” Watch.

Get a load of this.

Last night an unsolicited email from a spokesperson for corporate behemoth Koch Industries landed in our in box. Noting our coverage of the tea party movement, the spokesperson said Koch wanted “to reiterate some important facts” in advance of what it presumed would be additional coverage keyed to Tax Day. The email then proceeded to claim that Koch has no involvement with tea partiers and has provided them no funding.

That struck us as odd for a couple of different reasons. First, we hadn’t mentioned Koch in any of our recent reporting. Second, Koch is a big funder of Americans for Prosperity, an astroturf group that’s holding tea party rallies in nine states today alone. Read More

The Tea Party Express, formed by Republican political operatives in Sacramento, is in Washington today and announced its “target list” of Democrats for the 2010 mid-terms.

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A new poll out this morning shows why Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is considering an independent run for U.S. Senate: Marco Rubio crushes Crist in the GOP primary, but in a three-way general election race between Crist, Rubio, and Democrat Kendrick Meek, Crist holds a narrow lead.