Perhaps using a reverse echo of MSNBC's new slogan ("Lean Forward"), Keith Olbermann launched into the tea party on Wednesday night during a special comment that included a bumper-sticker-ready catch phrase: "Vote Backward, Vote Tea Party."

The "Countdown" host railed against the movement, using an analogy to call their candidates, "a group of unqualified, unstable individuals who will do what they are told, in exchange for money and power, and march this nation as far backward as they can get, backward to Jim Crow, or backward to the breadlines of the '30s, or backward to hanging union organizers, or backward to the Trusts and the Robber Barons."