A remarkable theme echoing through much of the political press Thursday morning is the realization that Tea Party candidates who are running for office as Republicans are hurting the party’s chances in a year that otherwise has been predicted to be a huge Republican landslide. The Washington Post headlines its story on the topic “Tea party antics could end up burning Republicans“, while Reuters declares “Tea Party-backed Republicans spur party switches“. The Guardian brings out the best headline and best line, however, with the headline “The GOP’s coming Tea Party hangover” and the line “Tea is the Republican party’s cocaine: thrilling for a moment, but ruinous over time.” Tea Party candidates have won nominations in Republican primaries by channeling unfocused rage, but as that rage now erupts into a combination of genuine violence and a complete inability to articulate a platform (as demonstrated by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer in this video, where she can’t even deliver an opening statement in a debate), even Republicans are moving away from “the crazy” and looking for candidates who are interested in good government rather than good theater.

I was on MSNBC with Alex Witt commenting on today’s rally in Washington DC. It will inevitably be compared to Glenn Beck’s rally, but that’s not really fair. The Beck rally represented the pinnacle of a well-funded 2 year plan to organize the tea parties by building up local groups around the country, pumping out a consistent message through right wing media outlets like Fox News, and promoting celebrities like Glenn Beck.

The Deepwater Horizon explosion was not a tragic unavoidable accident, it was an inevitable consequence of weak regulation coupled with corporate corner-cutting and greed.

Good for Ron Paul for telling Rahm and his little pro-bank whip operation to get stuffed. He’s seizing a moment of transpartisan anger at the banks and he’s pointing it straight at the Wall Street apologists. It will be interesting to see how far he can take it.

Fox News is still betting that you can fool some of the people all the time. And it appears to be working. Jamie Dimon can still knock back cocktails with John Boenher and watch Fox without feeling the slightest bit threatened by the tea parties.