Tea Party Nation: The left's killed "a billion people"

THIENSVILLE, Wis. -- The founder of Tea Party Nation claimed liberal ideology is responsible for "a billion" deaths over the past century during a raucous rally here Saturday in support of one of the six Republican state senators facing a recall election Tuesday.

"I will tell you ladies and gentlemen, I detest and despise everything the left stands for. How anybody can endorse and embrace an ideology that has killed a billion people in the last century is beyond me," said Tea Party Nation CEO Judson Phillips.

Phillips, who a day prior likened protesters of Gov. Scott Walker to Nazi storm troopers, urged a few hundred tea party supporters to turn out for state Sen. Alberta Darling, who is in a ferocious battle with state Rep. Sandy Pasch to hold onto her suburban Milwaukee seat.

But he wasn't the only speaker to use loaded language to gin up the crowd.

Vince Schmuki, a leader of the Ozaukee Patriot tea party group compared the recall effort to a terrorist attack.

"This is ground zero," said Schmuki. "You remember what the term ground zero means? We have been attacked."

He continued, "Tuesday is going to be the beginning of our takeover. And we're going to follow it up the following week, and then we're going to polish off the enemy in November 2012. Who's with me?"

A half-dozen protesters appeared at the Thiensville Village Park holding signs that said, "Blessed Are the Rich," and a few of them verbally jousted with tea party supporters, but there were no physical altercations.

The race in Senate District 8 between Darling and Pasch is expected to be one of the closest of the night. Pasch spent the day knocking on doors in the Glendale area and told POLITICO in an interview that Darling's vulnerability is a result of Republicans' "steady assault on middle-class values."

While the media is focused on the collective-bargaining issue as the driving force of the recall effort, Pasch said she's consistently hearing from independent and Republican-leaning voters about cuts to education and the erosion of local control.

"They've done so many things that people find egregious," she said, referring to GOP state lawmakers and Walker.

A campaign worker at Darling's headquarters could not say where the senator was and said her spokesman was at a wedding and unavailable for comment.