Phil Gingrey joins the ranks of John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Michael Steele who went on the Sunday talk shows and called the racist and bigoted rhetoric from the Tea baggers as just "isolated incidents". When Michael Smerconish asks Gingrey if it's fair to hold the GOP leadership accountable for the conduct of some of the protesters he lets Gingrey get away with this.

GINGREY: Of course not. The Tea Party activists don't even represent themselves as Republicans. They have a policy in regard to what they stand for. But I mean when you have literally thousands, I don't know, there may have been twenty five thousand people on Saturday and I stopped and spoke to many of them and they're good red blooded Americans and good honest people who traveled thousands of miles in some instances, some drove, some took buses, so you know, they're frustrated.

In any crowd like that you're always going to get somebody who goes a little bit over the line in regard to their remarks, what they shout out or the signs they carry, but I think Jim Clyburn who's a good friend, I respect the Majority Whip and John Lewis of course in my own delegation, the senior member of the Georgia delegation is a great human being. And we, I think they understand that people sometimes get out of line. But they're not representative certainly of the Republican Party and I don't think of the Tea Party movement in general.

Michael Smerconish failed to ask Phil Gingrey about his participation at that protest which consisted of quite a bit more than just stopping and speaking to a few of them. If you go look at the screen shot in this video, that's Phil Gingrey standing behind Michele Bachmann while she thanks Sean Hannity for providing a forum for her to organize the health care reform protests. Smerconish didn't bother to ask Gingrey how anyone could say that Dick Armey's fake grass roots organization Freedom Works could not be considered just an arm of the Republican Party.

As Thomas Frank pointed out, the Tea Party Movement is Led by Characters from the Jack Abramoff Story. Fox News and Republican astroturf groups started this movement and Michael Smerconish allows Gingery to paint them as some independent group that isn't being used by the Republicans for political gain. Pitiful.