August 16, 2010; 2:50 PM ET

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/08/more_gopers_bash_state_aid_as.html

Last week I noted here that Michele Bachmann and Sharron Angle had rolled out a new argument against the $26 billion state aid package passed by Dems: It's all a money-laundering scheme to funnel cash via public employee unions to Dem campaign coffers for use this fall.

Now GOP Rep. Steve King has joined this chorus. He told Radio Iowa:

"Much of those checks that will be distributed will have an automatic deduction in them that will transfer some of that money into the coffers of the unions and their political action money will go into the campaign accounts of 95 percent Democrats. This is a blatant money-laundering scheme that's cooked up by Nancy Pelosi."

Bachmann, too, used strikingly similar language last week, calling the state aid package, which was designed to help government save the jobs of thousands of teachers, police and firefighters, money that's being "laundered through the public employee unions" to reelect Democrats this fall. Angle agreed with her, describing the Dems' state aid package as a "way to solifidy the base" with "our taxpayer dollars."

In other words, this "money laundering" meme seems to be gaining some steam. Eric Kleefeld asks: "Could the same logic be applied to government spending on wars and military contractors under Republican administrations?"

It's also worth noting that this meme is of a piece with a campaign on the right to demonize public employees, and to get Americans to scapegoat them for their economic problems. The other day, Rush Limbaugh denounced public employees as "leftist" and "socialist," railing: "They want you to pay more taxes so they can continue in their freeloader gigs."

The larger trend here is that the likes of Bachmann and Angle -- willingly feeding the Tea Party base's most fevered hallucinations on a daily basis -- now routinely hint that everything Dems do must of necessity be nefarious, even vaguely criminal. Public employees, needless to say, are willing pawns in the Dems' criminal enterprise.