FiredUp! posted photographs of Tea Partiers protesting a planned visit from their most enthusiastic champion, Michele Bachmann, on behalf of good ol’ boy Roy Blunt. One sign bears the legend “Save Michele from Blunt Trauma.”  This concern about her welfare vis-a-vis Roy Blunt may have come too late though, since Bachmann canceled her trip to Missouri in order to continue what her Website describes as a “full and quick recovery” from a “sudden” illness of an undisclosed nature for which she briefly visited the hospital on Friday.

Bachmann did address Blunt’s volunteers via Skype, but, nevertheless, if I weren’t so obviously averse to malicious speculation, and if her spokesman had not so very carefully indicated otherwise, I might be inclined to think that Bachmann may have already succumbed to a little Blunt trauma before she even got here – and I wouldn’t blame her if she had. The Tea Partiers I’ve seen are a pretty scary bunch. I wouldn’t want them thinking that I’d been using them and then dissing them.

* Photo showing Bachmann announcing the formation of a congressional Tea Party Caucus