This is classic. At last month’s tea party protests during the Supreme Court arguments on the Affordable Care Act, tea partiers were asked what specific constitutional provisions were being violated.

Despite having their pocket constitutions firmly at hand, they couldn’t seem to articulate their constitutional objections to the Affordable Care Act at all. Among the responses were some truly ignorant ones, like “the commerce clause was added to the Constitution” (it wasn’t), or that the Constitution didn’t specifically mention health care. Hey, it doesn’t specifically mention nuclear weapons either, but I don’t see them out there protesting against those.

The response that chuffed me the most was the lady who, when confronted with the facts about the commerce clause, said “Well, we probably shouldn’t argue about that anyway, since neither of us really knows.” Hey, lady! Yes, one of us knows, and anyone who cares to know can easily find the answer by going to look at the images of the original constitution and looking carefully for traces of 18th century correction fluid. Hint: there isn’t any.

What this video proves is what we’ve been saying all along. There is no “Tea Party,” per se. There are just lots of Republicans who respond to fearmongering and manufactured nonsense in order to fight anything, even if they don’t know what they’re fighting. I’m sure they’re trying to be good citizens and participate in their democracy, but really, it does help to do that armed with something besides the feeling that it’s a bad thing because a Democrat did it.

Can we stop referring to this group as something legitimate and simply acknowledge they represent the easily-led group of card-carrying Republicans?