Get ready, it’s about that time. After nearly a month of heavy Tea Party coverage (something needed to fill the HCR gap!), which itself followed months of intermittent Tea Party coverage the media may be discovering they have squeezed all they can out of the Tea Partiers. Cue the new narrative: Actually the Tea Partiers aren’t that important. Oops!

Last night Rachel Maddow and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell discussed the other big rallies and protests taking place around the country by people who are actually angry their government isn’t doing enough. Rendell thinks the Dems are at fault for losing the argument to the Tea Partiers because they have been unwilling, or afraid, to speak out about what they believe in. “Show some guts!”

Regular watchers of Glenn Beck will know that he spends a lot of time trying to make the words ‘progressive’ and ‘socialist’ very scary. It’s something you frequently hear in Tea Party rhetoric as well: Obama is a socialist…eeh gads! But does it matter? Not to the kids, apparently.

Interesting. On last night’s show Rachel Maddow opted not to cover the DADT demonstrations at the White House yesterday, despite the police’s stunning decision to remove the White House Press from the scene. Instead she opted to spend ten minutes on lightly attended gun rallies that took place in and around Washington D.C. on Monday to mark Patriot’s Day (also, the anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing).

The tea partiers have been called many things, but here’s one they were probably not expecting: “They are no different in 2010 than what MoveOn.org was in 1998.” That assessment comes from CNN columnist Roland Martin, who, while previously being outspoken against racist elements within the party, is now out to defend the group from claims that their behavior is un-American.

Near the tail end of an interview on Charlie Rose last night, Charlie asked Rahm Emanuel “how deep do you think the anger is in the country?” Emanuel had plenty to say on the subject, including that he thinks everyone has a responsibility to act responsibly. However, he did note that Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are playing a role in “exacerbating tensions.”

I missed this yesterday, but Time‘s Joe Klein provided some further explanation (more like a follow-up punch….suffice to say, he’s not sorry) of the serious charge he made over the weekend that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin were nudging up close to committing sedition.

After a weekend that was filled with Tea Party talk, and accusations from Joe Klein that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin were close to being seditious, Beck opted to follow up today’s (Patriot Day) tweet with a long opening monologue that felt like a strange combination of a fireside chat meets an AA meeting. He is not seditious.

Bill Maher’s guests the other night, which included New Yorker editor David Remnick and journalist Laura Flanders, appeared to concur with Frank Rich’s take on what’s motivating the movement, concluding from the poll results that the Partiers are actually not that upset about government involvement or taxing (they like their medicare; social security), but are worried and angry that we have a black president.

A recent poll finds that the Tea Party at large admires two distinct figures as best representing what the movement stands for: Ron Paul and Sarah Palin. What is interesting is that despite this support the majority of Tea Partiers would not consider voting for either: “Fifty-three percent of those surveyed said they would not even consider voting for Palin if she ran for president in 2012; 59 percent said the same thing of Paul.” And there you have the major problem the Republicans are facing distilled down to one poll result.

More drama between Fox News and the Tea Party movement: Geraldo Rivera had Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams on to vent his frustrations about how the tea partiers are portrayed in the mainstream media, and Williams promptly took out his anger– straight at Rivera.

RedState Editor and CNN Contributor Erick Erickson has taken the offensive against the right lately. It began when he called for an end to the Tea Party movement, and now he’s taken on the Republican Party for an appearance by RNC Chairman Michael Steele at Al Sharpton‘s National Action Network. Is there a place on the right for someone who is neither a tea partier nor a Republican?

While it took most of the media until Wolf Blitzer‘s interview with former president Bill Clinton to catch his warning that the Tea Party movement could lead to a new Oklahoma City bombing, Rush Limbaugh caught Clinton’s first reference to the bombing during his Center for American Progress speech– and he insists Clinton, among others, is “out to destroy Western civilization.”

Former President Bill Clinton sat down with Wolf Blitzer yesterday to chat about his assessment of the passion on the part of the Tea Party movement, and after making similar statements yesterday in a speech to the Center for American Progress, he repeated that something like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing couid happen again given the anger of the movement.

Now that the Tea Party movement has done enough to build conservative careers, some on the right are ready to shut it down. Erick Erickson, editor of RedState.com and CNN contributor, wrote today that he is giving up on the movement because it is being torn apart by attention-seeking pundits and public officials. Apparently no one told Erickson that the Tea Party movement was political.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Timothy McVeigh’s name has been in the news a lot of late. This April 19 marks the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombings, meaning that regardless of what was going on in the world we’d likely be talking about him. That said, MSNBC is making a bit of leap in their promo for an upcoming special on McVeigh, hosted by Rachel Maddow.

Interesting new poll numbers out today that I imagine will result in a lot more politicians addressing the Tea Party movement with increasing sincerity between now and November. Turns out no matter how in the habit the media is of using ‘Tea Partiers’ as a byword for crazy, fringe, offensive sign-bearing Americans, they are actually the opposite. Namely, everyday Americans.

We first noted that Dale Robertson was quoted as saying that he had never seen racial slurs at a Tea Party event, even though he had been photographed holding one. Robertson then alleged that the photo must have been faked, although our expert disagreed. Since posting that article, however, numerous sources have contacted me with admissions by Robertson that the photo is real. After the jump, an arsenal of smoking guns.

I guess this means Sarah Palin has a sense of humor. Also, a grasp of the English language that perhaps some had not previously attributed to her. Palin followed up a weekend of well-covered speeches with this Facebook note, ostensibly about March Madness (the basketball kind).

Call it the Tea Party version of the “Whitey Tape,” if the “Whitey Tape” really existed. Dale Robertson, self-proclaimed founder of the Tea Party movement, was quoted in today’s Washington Times denying he had ever “seen any racial slurs” at Tea Party events. He was responding to the furor over nasty, sometimes violent reactions to the passage of health care reform.

Rachel Maddow last night highlighted a number of incidents nation-wide where it appears people opposed to the health care bill are using violent means to express their displeasure. Her conclusion? The tea party is not over. By a long shot. The question now is may be, are they getting violent?

“Rising tensions on Capitol Hill” is a cliche in cable news, but it may never have been apt than today. With the House currently negotiating a controversial vote on a health care reform, protesters have gathered to voice their opposition to the bill. CNN’s Capitol Hill reporter Dana Bash reports today of personally witnessing epithets being used towards John Lewis (D-GA) and Barney Frank (D-MA) by protesters that were identified earlier as “Tea Party people.”

The Tea Party movement has prompted its share of outrage and confusion. But somewhere along the road paved with falsified birth certificates and hand-written signs, people apparently never considered how adopting the beverage would affect the tea industry and those who subscribe to tea party culture — “the kind where you mind your manners and consider proper brewing temperatures.” It’s not good.

On the outside Liberty Central Inc. may look like another conservative tea partying lobbyist group, non-profit but accepting donations from corporate sponsors. Take a closer look though, and you’ll find the woman behind the organization is Virginia Thomas, the wife of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Which some critics are understandably worried might be a conflict of interest.

Well, this was an interesting meeting of the minds, one we’d do well to see more often. Last night Dick Armey was a guest on Charlie Rose. For the most part it actually made for an interesting interview — it’s a breath of fresh air to hear the partisan cable shoutfest taken down (and raised up) to the level of civil conversation. But even Charlie Rose could not resist a few jaw-dropping head shakes over some of Armey’s remarks.