Sarah Palin and the influence of the Tea Party fizzles out.

"When I tell my monkeys to fly, by God and Todd, that is what I expect them to do!"

Courtesy of The New York Times:

In October, Sarah Palin announced that she would not run for president in 2012, ending the media frenzy around her potential candidacy even as she vowed to remain politically active and influential. 

“I will continue driving the discussion for freedom and free markets,” she wrote in an e-mail to her supporters. 

Just over three months later, her attempts to wield influence in the presidential campaign the way she did during the 2010 midterm elections have largely fizzled. 

And the Tea Party movement that she helped to turn into a powerful political force in 2010 has so far displayed little impact on the course of the 2012 Republican presidential campaign. 

Over the last two weeks, Ms. Palin has urged voters in South Carolina and Florida to vote for Newt Gingrich as a way of striking back against the Republican establishment in Washington and against liberals. 

“If for no other reason, rage against the machine, vote for Newt. Annoy a liberal. Vote Newt. Keep this vetting process going, keep the debate going,” Ms. Palin said on Fox News two days before Tuesday’s primary in Florida. 

And how did that work out for the Grizzled Mama and the bloviating windbag?

But in the contest between the Tea Party’s Sarah Palin and that establishment on Tuesday, the establishment won decisively. 

Not only did Mr. Gingrich lose badly to Mitt Romney after Ms. Palin’s public pronouncement, but he even lost over all among supporters of the Tea Party, a plurality of whom apparently rejected Ms. Palin’s call to arms for the supporters of that movement.

What? Do you mean that the Teabaggers dared to defy their queen?

Well it's about damn time!

I think most of us who have been following politics for any amount of time realized that the Teabaggers  were a flash in the pan. They were essentially the John Birch Society (With a few KKK members thrown in) reborn. Really nothing new at all.

They had a profound effect on the Republican Party, and the 2010 election, because the GOP was weak and easily bullied into submission.  But since then the establishment Republicans, the ones that the Grizzled Mama keeps railing against, have learned how damaging it can be to let the inmates run the asylum.

So now, having outlived their usefulness, the Teabaggers find themselves being ushered from the hallways of power and back out into the streets where they belong, and where they can continue to proselytize the end of the world, the end of America, and the fact that Obama is the Anti-Christ,  to their hearts content.

If they get too cold I am sure that Sarah Palin, who is also now persona non grata in Washington, would happily invite them into her Wasilla home, where they can warm themselves by the fake fire backdrop that she uses for her Fox interviews.

Unless of course she no longer finds them useful either.