His name is Lance Baxter, better known as the "Geico: fifteen minutes can save you 15% or more on car insurance" guy.  Well, he was.  Unfortunately, Lance drank the Keith Olbermann Kool-Aid a few too many times and decided to call and leave a disgusting message on the answering machine of FreedomWorks - an organization involved in the tea party movement.  His message entailed much of the nonsense heard nightly during primetime on MSNBC: that tea partiers are "mentally retarded" and prone to violence.  But then Baxter did something incredibly ignorant.  So ignorant in fact, you could say that even a caveman wouldn't do it: he left his name and phone number in the message.

FreedomWorks got his message out to millions of Americans - many of whom might have been in the market for car insurance - and the company very quickly cut ties with the leftist Baxter.

I don't feel any sense of jubilation over the fact that Mr. Baxter lost his job.  Indeed, given what our current leadership has done to our economy, rejoicing in someone being fired is particularly cruel.  But this event does give more validation to the increasingly obvious reality that the tea party message of free markets, low taxes, smaller government, and fiscal responsibility is a runaway freight train that the impotent left is powerless to stop.  They have used their timeless tactics: they have misled, they have deceived, they have smeared, slandered and demonized...and they've come up woefully short.

As Baxter demonstrates, in the end they are the ones who end up looking like radical nuts.  It reminds me of a quote I shared with a crowd of a few hundred at a tea party event in Huntington, Indiana.  Mahatma Gandhi once said of dealing with ideological enemies, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

Could these words be any more accurate in describing the left's assault on tea party patriots?  When this movement started just one year ago, it was like pulling teeth to get anyone in the media to pay any attention.  The same liberal broadcast journalists who found it newsworthy when twelve anti-war activists joined Cindy Sheehan outside George W. Bush's ranch in Texas had no interest in covering gatherings of thousands of American citizens frustrated with their irresponsible government.  But despite being ignored, the movement continued to grow.

In response, the left kicked it into full mockery mode.  Nancy Pelosi derided the movement as being "Astroturf" - a concoction of the Republican Party meant to distract people from her and Obama's serious work.  And just like the obedient lapdogs they are, the complicit mainstream media picked up the meme and ran with it, poking fun at all the freaks wearing their Paul Revere outfits in public.  Yet despite being laughed at, the movement continued to grow.

And now, having utterly failed to derail the tea party message, the left has declared an all-out war on the tea partiers themselves.  They have attacked them as racist, bigoted, homophobic and violent radicals, hoping their smears will stick and people will shy away from joining such a vile movement.  But the sheer stupidity of their claims is so blatantly obvious that their attacks are backfiring.

While unhinged liberal Bill Maher calls the events "Klan rallies," and members of the Black Congressional Caucus claim they were called racist names by the protestors, not one has been able to produce a single piece of video or audio to support their outrageous accusations...this despite a $100,000 prize offered by Andrew Breitbart to anyone who can.

While Bill Clinton warns that the anti-government sentiment of these events (it's not anti-government by the way, it's anti-irresponsible big government) might turn violent, the only demonstrable hostility to take place was when liberal union thugs beat up a black tea partier named Kenneth Gladney at a St. Louis town hall meeting.

While Rachel Maddow, who uses her pseudo-intellectualism to mask her slander, cautions that the tea parties will soon produce the next Tim McVeigh, mainstream press like the Christian Science Monitor are forced to admit that these events are so peaceful that police around the country are relaxing their security and protocol for such public protests.

And while Keith Olbermann compares the movement to the Selma violence of the civil rights era, the fact remains that after nearly 10,000 tea parties in over a year, few if any arrests have been made.

So take heart, tea partiers: they have ignored you, they have laughed at you, they are now fighting you.  And in November, you win.