This is a most interesting read from MSNBC.com, not actually affiliated with the television network of the same name and actively trying to come up with a new name so as not to be associated with Alan Grayson when his new show starts.

Begin, if you will, with this:

“Senator McConnell will move quickly to include them,” said a GOP strategist who is close to the Republican leader. “The worst thing you can do to somebody who’s got a lot of energy and a lot of ideas is to wall them off and not let them be expressed.”

Key to McConnell’s success, added a former GOP leadership aide, will be to harness and channel the Tea Party agenda “in a way that’s productive rather than destructive or harmful to Senate Republicans or the country in general.”

Now, when you read stuff like this you know clearly that this person is reflecting the thinking of the leadership because in stories like this the reporter always asks for people to talk to. Also, you now know that the Senate GOP views the tea party movement as “destructive or harmful” not just to the Senate GOP, which is a good thing, but also to the country.

Then there is Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mitch McConnell.

Don Stewart says, “Senator McConnell often says that if having more conservative members in the Senate is a ‘problem,’ it’s a ‘problem’ he wants to have.”

It’s not a bad quote, but who exactly is saying having more conservative members is a problem other than the Senate GOP leadership?

More troubling is the continued storyline that Tom Coburn is going to be the conservative movement’s Judas, sent by Mitch McConnell to betray them and co-opt them into the purposes of the Senate GOP against Jim DeMint and the conservatives.

Now I happen to know that this is the leadership pushing this story and Tom Coburn has nothing to do with it. And that’s stupid because it puts Tom Coburn in a terrible spot.

If Coburn does now become the go between, the incoming conservatives will know for certain that when they see Tom Coburn’s face, they are hearing Mitch McConnell’s voice.

That puts Coburn in an untenable position and I cannot believe he’d be stupid enough to concede and go along with this.

Note to Tom Coburn — stay humble and remember you may think you should do this and undermine McConnell in the process, but in reality you will not succeed. You’ll just taint yourself.

By the way, the irony is that the new Senators the GOP is portraying as “problems” will be more reliable votes for the GOP than the Senators the GOP is touting.