Some people you can always count on. Like former congressmen and current lobbyist Trent Lott.

Count on Lott to confirm that he’s a true-blue partisan of gravy-train politics-as-usual, a dyed-in-the-wool establishmentarian committed to extinguishing each faint, flickering chance to downsize Leviathan.

The man is a rock.

“We don’t need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples,” Lott with calm, sneering authority recently told the Washington Post, as his granite-hard jaw jutted with stern, rectitudinous integrity. “As  soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them.”

What kind of creature is a “Jim DeMint disciple”? What terrible deeds will these zombie-like Jim-DeMintians perpetrate if the heroic former congressmen and his redoubtable cohorts fail to co-opt them in time?

The creatures are affiliated with the Tea Party rebellion against the super-escalating scope and reach of the federal government, as manifested in the looming takeover of the medical industry, trillion-dollar annual budget deficits, etc. Senate candidate Rand Paul told the Post that the goals of Jim-DeMintian Tea Party sympathizers like himself have something to do with fighting for term limits, a balanced budget amendment, and legislation that is consistent with the Constitution.

Sounds like if they make any headway we can expect more freedom, more real wealth, less red ink, less Washington-based strangling of everybody.

Hence, Trent Lott to the rescue.

Thanks a lot, Lott.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The election season is heating up and challengers are making headway. So, here comes the name-calling by media hot-heads. The boiling point was quickly reached when Keith Olbermann called a Tea Party candidate a liar and a traitor, declaring that the challenger should be arrested and jailed.

This is, sadly, not unexpected.

In the 20th century, what was once considered radical and extremist became mainstream. The common sense wisdom of America’s founders was thrown out for imported philosophies like socialism and “dirigisme.” The leading intellectuals at the start of the century, many educated in Germany, took home doctrines of limitless government and added a can-do American spirit, creating Progressivism and then the New Deal.

Big Government went from the thing most feared to Our Friend.

Then, in England, a socialist noted that this alleged Big Brother could be awfully cruel, the opposite of fraternal. An Austrian economist explained how even well-intentioned government, if unlimited by a rule of law, could send us all down the road to serfdom. A backlash began.

Though increasing numbers of intelligent, concerned citizens began to doubt and then decry the growth of government, government continued to grow. And establishment opinion called supporters of limited government “extremists” and “radicals.”

Now, as government spending lurches beyond all sanity, it’s the establishment that appears extremist.

Expect a few skirling kettles to boil over this season. And then boil dry — and empty. Like the establishment’s big government philosophy itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Rand Paul’s supporters weren’t alone in celebrating his big win. The AP headline read: “Democrats relish Paul’s GOP win in Ky. Senate race.” Sen. Robert Menendez, Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, chortled over the “stark contrast between Rand and his opponent, state Attorney General Jack Conway.” He thinks Paul’s easier to beat come November than the establishment opponent Paul clobbered.

That used to be the rule. The more radical a candidate, the more likely to be trounced by the status-quo alternative.

But something’s different this time, right?

Not long ago Rand’s father Ron Paul was regularly ridiculed for being too extreme and “nutty.”

Now it’s the centrists who look nutty. Or, as Rand put it, “The tea party message is not . . . an extreme message. What is extreme is a $2 trillion deficit.”

Across the country in Washington State, a state representative is being challenged by Tim Sutinen, who is running explicitly under the “Tea Party” banner. A local paper quoted Sutinen as advising the legislature to declare a fiscal emergency and renegotiate state employee contracts.

The Democratic incumbent showed less glee than his Kentucky colleagues: “Those folks that represent the tea party are obviously good folks who have a view of government and they are frustrated. A lot of people are frustrated about the economy.”

My reading? It’s not just the economy. Continued dishonesty and self-dealing by politicians even in the midst of the crisis — that’s what’s frustrating.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Amy Kremer, director of the Tea Party Express, one of the many organizations that try to steer the Tea Party movement, appeared on The View, recently. She stayed on point, talking sense, on the whole:

• The movement is all about fiscal issues, limited government, responsibility, and free markets. No social issues, she said.
• “We have no leader, the leaders are all across the country.” Sarah Palin is not the Tea Party’s leader.
• The Tea Party is non-partisan, crossing “all party lines,” with independents, Democrats, Republicans and libertarians participating.
• Tea Party folk are most angry at the GOP because “there’s no denying that the spending started under Bush.”

Ms. Kremer ably steered the conversation away from the traps that The View folk might have liked to see her fall into. Co-host Joy Behar appeared quite pleased that Kremer acknowledged Bush-era Republicans as responsible for starting this current trend in over-spending.

So, good talking points. Other Tea Party folks should emulate her. I say this in part to reiterate points I made on Townhall not long ago. To seriously tackle our massive fiscal problems, the Tea Party will have to confront spending across the board, including a Sarah Palin/John McCain-style foreign policy.

How is it that people from across the political spectrum can work together in this movement?

It’s simple: No one but a fool would flirt with government insolvency and ruin.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Over the weekend, Utah Republicans defeated three-term incumbent U.S. Senator Robert Bennett at their state convention. Two more conservative candidates, both with support among Tea Party activists, now move on to a primary election to decide the eventual GOP nominee.

Senator Bennett’s defeat marks the first U.S. senator to be denied re-nomination in Utah in 70 years.

The strangest part of this, though, is the strange reaction of much of the media. The morning paper says Bennett was as conservative as any rational human being could possibly desire . . . citing Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine.

Kathleen Parker, the liberal Washington Post’s idea of a conservative, lectured before the vote that “Tea Partyers risk losing some of their strongest voices.” Tea Party supporters seem determined to decide for themselves which voices speak for them.

Parker also smeared Tea Party folks as an anti-intellectual rabble, characterizing Bennett’s long tenure in Washington to be “as disadvantageous as having an Ivy League degree. Those out-of-touch elites, you know.”

Touchy. Very out-of-touchy. Forgotten by the maven? Bennett’s old pledge to serve only two terms.

Bennett had been seeking his fourth term.

E.J. Dionne called the Utah result a “non-violent coup.” Yes, just exactly like a coup — except for that voting part.

For those counting coup right now, establishment folks are receiving a whacking. No wonder they bristle.

Expect more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.