By GottaLaff

Wearing wigs and three-cornered hats, Bill O’Connor and Ruger Rusnak share a quiet word at the national Tea Party convention in Nashville on Friday.
(Stephen Crowley, The New York Times )

Yeah, they wouldn’t want to look, you know, crazy:

But at the inaugural National Tea Party Convention here this weekend, gone were the placards that protesters carried last year with Mr. Obama’s face wearing a Hitler mustache or superimposed on the Joker. Gone, really, were any placards, unless you count the poster of Sarah Palin in her signature red jacket that hung from one of the wrought-iron balconies of the Opryland Hotel and Convention Center.

Organizers said that anyone “looking too crazy” would have been tossed out. They had a goal that turned out to be shared by pretty much everyone here: to turn the Tea Party into a serious political force, rather than the angry fringe group they say it had been branded as.

“They say it had been branded as.” Had been branded? When a group of so-called revolutionaries dress up like loons, carry hostile, hateful signs, lie, fear-monger, and scream their way through town hall meetings, they kinda invited that whole “branding” thing.

Poor them. They’ve been unfairly branded.

Angry fringe is exactly what they are. It’s a little late to shake off that label, although it’s just swell of them to try to tone it down. Good for them! Wow. Putting that toothpaste back in the tube. Magic!

In fact, you can see how successful they were at that if you watched Palin’s “serious political” speech last night. Not angry fringe-y at all. No, she’s her usual knowledgeable, rational self, full of constructive ideas, compassionate, wise, and not at all snide or nasty. In fact, CliffNotes McTelePalmer was as well-prepared as she’s always been.

Nope, the Tea Tantrumers don’t look “too crazy” any more. They’ve completely reinvented themselves.