Today at the Values Voter Summit, a gathering of more than 1,000 members of the religious right in Washington, D.C., former House Whip Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., told a friendly audience, "[T]his is a time when our values are clearly being challenged." It was a time, he suggested, that Republicans, not having control of the Congress, had to field unexpected volleys.

Explaining his strategy for meeting those challenges, he told a story about British soldiers in occupied India. The story was meant to understand the task faced by the Republican right on the current political landscape, which is apparently not unlike a golf course carved by the soldiers out of the subcontinental jungle:

"...Something they didn't anticipate was monkeys came running out of the jungle and they grabbed the golf balls...," Blunt said, "and they might throw the golf ball back at you...So for this golf course, and this golf course and this golf course only, they passed a rule, and the rule was, you have to play the ball where the monkey throws it."

The crowd roared with laughter.

"And that is the rule in Washington all the time," Blunt said.

He went on to say that he recently saw a bumper sticker he liked that read: "Don't let Obama find out what comes after a trillion."