For some insight on the relationship between the Tea Party and the Republican Party now that the primaries have united them on paper, Olbermann asks Dave Weigel to assess what he implies is hypocrisy on the part of the Tea Party candidates. Instead, Weigel counters that it’s a process of taming, not necessarily one of corrupting. Take, he argued, Sharron Angle in Nevada as an example: “every time she says something she believes she ends up in trouble or on your show,” causing “a struggle between Sharron Angle being Sharron Angle versus Sharron Angle being what the Republicans want her to be.”

And it isn’t only Angle. Olbermann brings up Rand Paul in Kentucky, who ended up accepting help from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell despite having announced he would not do so from Republicans who endorsed TARP. “The fall for idealism is pretty rapid for some of these candidates,” Weigel explained.

Olbermann seems baffled by the entire package: the message, the challenge of compromise within the party, and, yes, the rhetoric. To Weigel, the “God” note in Joe Miller’s campaign message seemed secondary to the greater story: “I want to see how many Republicans end up winning and getting co-opted.”

The segment from last night’s Countdown on MSNBC below:

Alan Grayson became an instant hero to many on the left when he refused to apologize for his “Die quickly” rant on the House floor, mainly because he was the first Democrat ever to refuse any demand for an apology. Since then, he’s done everything he can to earn the name of his new website, CongressmanWithGuts.com, ratcheting up the tough talk along the way. This week, however, he was forced to apologize for a month-old remark that resurfaced. He called a female assistant to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke a “K Street whore.”

Grayson didn’t help his “Congressman with guts” cred any when he basically took on the role of his own receptionist in response to Griff’s questions. Here’s the full O’Reilly segment:

First of all, I don’t know what “rules” Grayson is talking about, unless the First Amendment has some kind of “appointments” clause in it. Griff approached him in the halls of the Capitol, an area that we all pay for. It’s a far cry from, say, tracking someone down while they’re on vacation. If Grayson didn’t want to talk to Griff, he should have had the guts to say so.

As for making an appointment, I can certainly vouch for that strategy going nowhere if your subject doesn’t want to talk to you.

In fact, the whole episode put me in mind of an experience I had at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last year. Much like Griff, I wanted to confront a public figure about statements he had made, but was met with a similarly gutless response:

The fact of the matter is, if you’re doing your job well as a journalist, some people are not going to want to talk to you. If this were not the case, the press would simply be one big PR operation. As Major Garrett pointed out in his radio interview on Tuesday, access is often the price you pay for skepticism.

Having said all of that, Grayson should have been able to handle Jenkins better than this. Perhaps he just blanked, a notion supported by this video footage that we obtained, which shows what Grayson was thinking as Jenkins questioned him: