I told you a while back about a small group of Republican Senators sitting down for drinks at the Capitol Hill Club. They’d been to a tea party rally that day and were openly mocking the tea partiers. One of them, a guy tea partiers adore, seemed to hold them in open contempt at this table.

Well, between the tea partiers and Jim DeMint, these Republican Senators are getting a lot of heartburn and are starting to speak out. One of the good old boys of the club who can speak freely because he’s on the outside lobbying in now is the former leader of the Senate Republicans, Trent Lott.

Former Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), now a D.C. lobbyist, warned that a robust bloc of rabble-rousers spells further Senate dysfunction. “We don’t need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples,” Lott said in an interview. “As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them.”

But Lott said he’s not expecting a tea-party sweep. “I still have faith in the visceral judgment of the American people,” he said.

Oh, so Lott is rooting against us. So is Bob Bennett. Bennett says the GOP is going to lose Kentucky, Nevada, and Colorado because of the gosh-darn tea party activists.

But don’t worry. After flying back from Colorado where he was out with Orrin Hatch helping Jane Norton raise money, John Cornyn said this:

“The candidates are not ours to choose. . . . They’re the choice of the primary voters in the states, and I think we should respect their choices.”