Walt Minnick must be living well.The 1st District congressman couldn't ask for more from his short-lived and highly publicized April-July romance with one national tea party group. First, on Tax Day 2010, Tea Party Express announced its endorsements, and Minnick was the only Democrat on its list of "Tea Party Heroes." That made Minnick an Idaho politician just offbeat enough to get national attention (just not in a Larry Craig kind of way). The day after the endorsement, CNN interviewed the one Democrat who passed muster with the flavor-of-the-month tea party movement. Then, this week, Minnick got even more mileage from the endorsement - by rejecting it. Mark Williams made Minnick's job easy/Kevin Richert, Idaho Statesman. More here.

• Isaac Newton's real life/Dennis Mansfield
• One vote off the party line/Fort Boise
• Minnick shores up base, rejects 'Tea Party Express'/Sisyphus, 43rd State Blues
• Demise of the 'Shoe Tree'/Susan Drumheller, Idaho Conservation League
• An earlier Tea Party: Lessons learned from 1930s/Marc Johnson, Johnson Report
  

Question: Is it possible to play the flirtation with the Tea Party any better than Congressman Walt Minnick did?