Democrats suddenly are drinking the tea, too

WASHINGTON — Tea parties — they aren't just for conservatives anymore.

Liberals are turning against President Obama with an energy that until now has been reserved for Fox News viewers who wear tri-corner hats and wave yellow "Don't Tread on Me" flags:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., declared Wednesday that she won't ask House members to support Obama's Afghanistan troop increase in a January vote. "The president's going to have to make his case," she said.

On the same day, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., denounced Obama's renomination of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. "When the people voted for change in 2008," Sanders said, "they did not vote to have one of the key architects of the Bush economy be reappointed."

Howard Dean went on the radio and said of the Senate health-care bill, which Obama is fighting to pass: "The best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill."

MoveOn.org called a protest outside the White House to demand that "the president to stand up to Joe Lieberman and fight for the health-care reform principles he campaigned on."

Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., who gained fame by saying Republicans believe Americans should "die quickly," denounced Obama's Afghanistan policy and read a petition on the House floor asking members to vote against sending more troops.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., in a series of outbursts, criticized Obama over Afghanistan, a health-care overhaul and the handling of the Guantánamo Bay prison.

Republicans, enjoying their rivals' intraparty squabble, circulated a compendium of quotes from Democrats criticizing one another and the White House: "The insurance lobby is taking over." ... "A very sad state of affairs." ... "The Obama administration is sitting on the sidelines." ... "The White House has been useless." ... "It's time for the president to get his hands dirty."

As Democrats attacked their own, the original tea-party types had to raise their game to compete. Luckily for them, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., had a plan. He went to the Senate floor Wednesday and asked Democrats to agree to a health-care amendment that "would certify that every member of the Senate has read the bill and understands it before they vote on the bill."

Understands it? Would there be a quiz? Would the exam be scored by the Congressional Budget Office? When Democrats rejected this idea, Coburn responded with a parliamentary maneuver that stopped all action on the floor until the Senate clerk could read aloud every word of a 767-page amendment offered by Sanders.

Sanders, purple in the face, beckoned furiously at Coburn, who smiled, winked and attended to his BlackBerry. "How long will it take?" Sanders asked a staffer.

"I don't know — eight hours?" she answered.

Nearly three hours and 139 pages later, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., surrendered. He waved Sanders into the cloakroom. Sanders emerged on the Senate floor minutes later and withdrew his amendment calling for government-run health care.

"This is nothing more than an ongoing stalling tactic on the part of the Republicans," Sanders complained of Coburn's stunt.

Sanders' complaint carried some irony, because he delivered it at a news conference he had called to explain why he had put a "hold," or a delay of his own, on Obama's renomination of Bernanke. "I am going to do everything I can to see that he is not reappointed," the senator vowed. "I am requesting President Obama give us a new nominee."

In a case of unlucky timing, Time magazine a few hours earlier had named Bernanke its Person of the Year for his role in rescuing the world economy from collapse. Robert Borosage of the liberal Campaign for America's Future said the award was "like celebrating an arsonist for helping put out the fire they had just put a match to."

Sanders also offered his complaints about the health-care legislation: "I am talking to the Democratic leadership, trying my best to salvage some positive things in this bill, so I am not on board yet." The senator, who complained personally to Obama about the health bill Tuesday, observed: "I've been raising a lot of concerns lately with President Obama."

In that, he isn't alone. Sanders and Borosage released a list of activists joining the call for a delay on Bernanke's confirmation. Among them: Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks.

FreedomWorks? Yup, that's the conservative outfit at the center of the anti-Obama tea-party movement. Said Sanders: "There are some very strange bedfellows coming together."

Dana Milbank is a Washington Post reporter who writes "Washington Sketch," an observational feature that focuses on politics and other topics in the capital.