Alternate title: Politically flabby Democrat (in comfortably Democratic seat) suddenly remembers that home state is losing a Congressional District; and that the redistricting process is fully in the hands of the other party*.

Which is probably too long a title, at that. Anyway, Mikey Doyle is very, very sorry that the Tea Party thought that he was talking about them when he started spouting off about terrorists:

U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, said he wasn’t comparing Tea Party members with terrorists when he used the word during a closed-door caucus meeting Monday, but was expressing frustration at President Obama’s negotiating tactics, which he said gave in too quickly to GOP demands in the debt ceiling debate.

“Had I simply said hostage-taker, there wouldn’t be this reaction. I certainly wasn’t out to defame anybody,” said Doyle, who couldn’t recall the exact statement he made.

Tremble at the courage of this fine specimen of Pennsylvanian Democrat-hood, if you will. And from a currently D+19 seat, too (apparently, ‘only’ getting almost 70% of the vote in 2010 was more of a shock to Doyle’s system than he rather liked). For the record: no, ‘hostage-taker’ would not have been notably better; Doyle was, in fact, out to defame people whose only crime is to disagree with him on a basic point of fiscal policy; and I believe that the exact statement that he made was…

“We have negotiated with terrorists,” an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”

…which is why Vice President Biden’s staff is currently doing everything short of an actual cross-check to get their charge out of the blast radius on this one. Because those ‘terrorists’ are tired of this kind of language.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Said other party is expected to be very, very careful this go-round with its likely changes, but that doesn’t actually help Doyle in this case; it merely means that the Republicans might feel comfortable whittling off a few safe votes around the edges. Just to watch Doyle dance a little…