Republican leaders are putting the demands of 30 Tea Party members over 300 million Americans, a top White House adviser said Sunday, insisting that Congress pass a resolution to keep government functioning and approve President Obama's jobs plan.

Senior adviser David Plouffe, who managed the president's 2008 campaign, said the Tea Party is controlling the debate in Congress, even as it comes close to a government shutdown over how to pay for disaster relief as part of a continuing resolution to keep government operating.

"We're not going to make progress on the deficit, on things we can do right now for jobs, on tax cuts, unless those 30 or 40 Tea Party members of the Republican House stop being the focal point of our discussion," Plouffe said.

As NewsBusters reported Friday, Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman during an interview on CNN said members of the Tea Party are racists willing to do whatever they can to "get this black man" out of the White House.

After his win in Saturday's Florida straw poll, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain responded to Freeman during an interview with Fox News's Neil Cavuto (video follows with transcript and commentary):

NEIL CAVUTO: Morgan Freeman, the actor, has been very critical of Tea Parties, and said that what they’re doing is racist. I’m paraphrasing here, but what do you make of that argument?

HERMAN CAIN: Most of the people that are criticizing the Tea Parties, Neil, about having a racist element, they have never been to a Tea Party.

CAVUTO: But wait a minute. He has played a President of the United States.

CAIN: Oh. Great, yeah, in a movie. This is real life out here on the campaign trail, man. This is not a movie.

A national Tea Party group urged Democrats to adhere to their own calls for civility after Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters told a restless crowd over the weekend that the "Tea Party can go straight to hell."

Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin, who lead the Tea Party Patriots, suggested President Obama should step in to put a check on the overheated rhetoric.

"We've had Democrats calling American citizens 'terrorists' and 'hostage takers,' and now an elected Democratic representative says that we can 'go straight to hell.' The president and all leaders of the Democratic Party, who have called for civility in the past, are neglecting to censure their own. Is civility only required from their opponents?" they asked in a statement. "Perhaps it's time for a new-NEW era of civility. ... The president's silence on these latest violations of civility has been deafening, but not surprising."

President Obama came face-to-face with the Tea Party last night in Iowa, clashing with members during and after a town hall last night.

Ryan Rhodes, a group leader in the Hawkeye State, stood up and shouted a question during a town hall asking the president how he can call for more civility when "your vice president is calling people like me, a Tea Party member, a 'terrorist.'"

Obama, who had not called on the man, said the town hall wouldn't work "if you just stand up when I asked everybody to raise their hand ... I didn't see you. I wasn't avoiding you ... Please."

After calling another person, Obama circled back to address Rhodes' question: "First of all, in fairness to this gentleman who raised a question, I absolutely agree that everybody needs to try to tone down the rhetoric."

You'd expect it from Newsweek or the New York Times, but PC World?

For some reason, Dan Tynan of ITWorld.com and PCWorld.com just couldn't resist working in a gratuitous swipe at Tea Party conservatives in an August 11 article entitled "Facebook's Phonebook Fiasco."

Here's the offending comment in context

Senator John McCain is refusing to back down after infuriating Tea Partiers for likening them recently to hobbits.

During a town-hall meeting on Monday in his home state of Arizona, Republican Mr McCain came under fire when angry constituents asked him to apologize for remarks that he made during the debt-limit debate last month.

'What was wrong that I said?' asked Mr McCain in Gilbert.

While continuing to cast doubt on the credibility of Standard & Poor’s, several Democrats on Sunday said there is an even greater culprit in the downgrade of the nation’s credit rating: the tea party.

“I believe this is, without question, the tea party downgrade,” Sen. John F. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, a day that also saw mounting anxieties in world markets over the downgrade among myriad other economic woes worldwide. Some of the world’s top financial ministers issued a joint statement Sunday night committing themselves to preserve the stability of financial markets and their economies.

David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Obama, used the exact same phrase in dubbing the credit rating drop the “tea party downgrade,” as Democrats tried to position themselves as reasonable, pragmatic leaders and conservative Republicans as irresponsible ideologues who caused the downgrade by refusing to accept any new taxes.