[Doug Kendall is President & Founder, and Hannah McCrea is Online Communications Director of the Constitutional Accountability Center.]

The efforts of Tea Partiers to wrap their anti-government agenda within the imagery of our Nation’s Founding reached absurd and dangerous heights this morning with the release of Alabama congressional candidate Rick Barber’s “Gather Your Armies” campaign ad, which portrays a George Washington-like figure authorizing armed rebellion in response to federal taxation and a law passed through the process established by the Founders (the health care bill). Barber himself is heard in the ad stating that he would “impeach him,” apparently referring to President Obama, and then adds, ominously, “and if that’s not enough...”...

Barber’s ad invokes patriots such as George Washington apparently to support a proposition that Washington would surely have found abhorrent: that citizens should engage in armed rebellion in response to government actions sanctioned by our Constitution. In fact, we know precisely how President Washington would have responded if the armed rebellion suggested by Barber materialized: he would have crushed it. We know this because just such a rebellion – the Whiskey Rebellion – happened during Washington’s presidency....