Maher: Tea party nuts are 'falling out of the nut bag'

With his HBO show on hiatus, Bill Maher spent some of his free time Tuesday discussing the aftermath of the November midterms with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.

"Do you take any comfort in the fact America did not elect [Christine O'Donnell] or [Sharron] Angle in Nevada or, in fact, did not elect a majority of the tea partiers?" Olbermann asked.

Maher may be able to take a little bit of credit for the loss of Republican Senate candidate from Delaware Christine O'Donnell. He used his Real Time show to broadcast a clip of O'Donnell admitting she had once dabbled in witchcraft.

O'Donnell appears to have overreacted by eventually running a campaign ad declaring, "I am not a witch."

"Of course I take a lot of comfort in that," Maher replied. "Yes, I think America did draw a line and when the nuts started falling out of the nut bag this year. They said, 'Yeah, even us, the electorate of America, the crack baby that we are, is going to say enough is enough.'"

Maher explained the Senate race in Nevada between Sen. Harry Reid and Sharron Angle was the epitome of what is going on in America. "You know what, [Sen. Harry Reid] was a guy who got a lot done in the Senate, as opposed to the crazy lady with 20 dead cats in the basement. That was the choice and it was that close? So yeah, I take some comfort, but not a lot," Maher said.

"It was a gigantic victory for the Republicans, but they shouldn't kid themselves either. People weren't really voting for them. People were just voting against the Democrats," Maher continued.

Maher observed that the Democrats' success in Congress had largely been overlooked.

"It's not widely reported in the mainstream media, this was one of the most successful Congresses in, like, 40 years probably since LBJ. The problem is they don't tell people about it."

In the 111th Congress, Democrats passed historic health care reform, Wall Street reform as well as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which was designed to stimulate the economy.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act aimed to protect women against pay discrimination and the American Legion praised the 111th Congress for their work on veterans legislation.

"False equivalency is a sin in this country," Maher told Olbermann. "To pretend that both sides have moderates, they don't. There are no moderates on the Republican side."

"At some point the left moved to the center, the right moved into a mental hospital. And there is no middle anymore. The right keeps -- the Republicans keep staking out turf further and further to the right and demand that the Democrats meet them in the middle. But it's not the middle anymore."

"That's why health care is so watered down, because it's really Bob Dole's old Republican plan from 1994, but somehow that got to be the middle now," Maher pointed out.

Real Time with Bill Maher returns to HBO on Jan. 14, 2011.

This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast Nov. 16, 2010.