In the same debate Mr Gingrich delivered a peroration on the virtues of making people work that impressed his tea-party audience so much that they gave him a rapturous standing ovation.

ECONOMIST: Lexington

' Over a dinner of a chicken impaled and roasted on a spike, its head still attached, with fiddlehead ferns and whole sprouting peanuts, the owner of the plantation put a different angle to me: 'Picking tea - it's women's work - it always has been.

BBC: Here be dragons

Instead he has adopted the top-down style of so many Tea Party governors across the country, refusing to compromise or work toward some form of buy-in.

FORBES: Wisconsin Supreme Court Reinstates Anti-Collective Bargaining Law

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio viewed the result as an opportunity for Republicans and Democrats to work together but also an affirmation of the anti-tax tea party, the upstart movement that helped the Republicans capture the House in 2010.

CNN: GOP retains grip on House

His notion of a day's work was to ask a passer-by for tuppence for a cup of tea and, having got the money, produce Thermos, milk and sugar for the astonished benefactor and inquire whether they wanted one lump, or two.

ECONOMIST: Jonathan Routh

In Pennsylvania last year, Megan Geller, a 23-year-old waitress at a suburban Chicago Outback Steakhouse, wore a bright yellow Tea Party bracelet to work.

FORBES: Talking Politics At Work Can Get You Fired

Then they went to work injecting the razzle-dazzle they had picked up in the retail business into their tea-packing venture.

FORBES: Tea Party