Did you hear about last weekend's National Tea Party Convention? We could laugh it off as the lunatic fringe, but that would miss the point. The ascendancy of this right-wing, angry, populist movement isn't funny - it's dangerous. And these activists have their eyes on the Senate.

Sarah Palin is funding multiple candidates through her political action committee. "Mainstream" Republican Senate candidates are saying and doing bizarre things to earn tea party support. If these candidates win, it's game over for progress.

You've helped to defend our majority, and I want to thank you for that. Now, we need your help again. It's only 17 days until our February FEC deadline, and pundits are watching every fundraiing number to see if we have what it takes to defeat this movement. Your donation to the DSCC right now will help build strong campaigns, respond to Republican attacks and keep the radical right out of the Senate.

Stop the tea party Republicans. Contribute $25, $50 or more to the DSCC. We must raise $248,461 by Feb. 28 to fight back and have the resources we need.

You and I both know that our country would look quite different if tea partiers were calling the shots:

• National Tea Party Convention speaker and former Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo is calling for a return to segregation-era tactics. "We do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country," he said. "People who could not even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House."

• Convention speaker Joseph Farah represented the "birther" wing of tea party nation: "My dream is that if Barack Obama even seeks re-election as president in 2012 that he won't be able to go to any city … in America without seeing signs that ask, 'Where's the Birth Certificate?'"

• Senate candidate Jane Norton of Colorado, in a full pander to the tea party movement, wants the Department of Education abolished, an idea so radical, even Newt Gingrich let it die.

• In Florida, tea partiers have catapulted extreme right-wing candidate Marco Rubio into the lead in the Republican primary.

The last thing we need is a bunch of tea party types steering our country's agenda. Progress depends on keeping them out of the Senate.

Stop the tea party Republicans. Contribute $25, $50 or more to the DSCC. We must raise $248,461 by Feb. 28 to fight back and have the resources we need.

We've worked hard to build our majority - now is not the time to let it slip away. The United States Senate is no place for radical right-wing ideologues. It's time to get serious about stopping the tea party - before it's too late.

Sincerely,

J.B. Poersch

P.S.: We need your help again to raise $248,461 by Feb. 28 in order to stop the tea partiers. Your donation to the DSCC right now builds grassroots campaigns, pushes back against Republican smears and fights the radical right.

Click here to contribute $25, $50 or more to the DSCC.