On CNN’s State of the Union today, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint responded to an assertion made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last week on Meet the Press that the influence of the Tea Party has been dying down as the economy is slowly picking up steam. Reid claimed that Republicans are starting to realize the Tea Party is too radical and are trying to distance themselves from it, but DeMint argued that the movement is still going strong.

On Meet the Press today, David Gregory showed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a poll that shows two-thirds of the electorate disapproves of the Democrats in Congress. Reid acknowledged that the American people have many legitimate problems with Congress, but insisted Republican obstructionism has been the main roadblock to legislative success, citing the debt ceiling debate as an example.

Last week, I predicted that, if Ron Paul didn’t place first in Iowa, conservative bigwigs and the GOP establishment would use that as an excuse to stop talking about him until he quietly went away. However, as Paul’s support base has refused to wane and, in fact, seemed to grow, it appears that I was way off. Today on her radio show, Laura Ingraham and Sen. Jim DeMint offered a full-fledged warning to the Right about the dangers of ignoring Paul and what he stands for.

It’s no secret that Mitt Romney isn’t exactly a darling of the Tea Party, but Karen Martin, the head of the Spartanburg County, S.C., chapter, did not mince words when speaking to NPR’s Frank James about just how little they care for him.

Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) has served the state of Indiana in six consecutive terms in the U.S. Senate. While hard core conservatives may derisively point to his willingness to work with his ideological foes across the aisle, Lugar is a well respected member of congress recognized for his tough but well informed positions on U.S. foreign policy. Still, he finds himself in battle with some home-grown Tea Party candidates for his Senate seat, which Lugar took aim at during a sit down with CNN’s Candy Crowley.

The fallout from the House GOP’s  (including Tea Party members) cave-in on the payroll tax cut extension has been heavier than a dumpster full of wet tea bags. Tea Party supporters are furious that not a single member had the stones to object its passage by unanimous consent. Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) tried to save a little face by telling CNN’s T.J. Holmes that he would totally have stopped the measure, if only he could have gotten there in time! Upon follow up, though, not so much.

Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, was taken into custody at New York’s LaGuardia Airport Thursday after attempting to board a Delta flight to Detroit whilst in possession of a gun. As sensational as that may sound (Was it a bazooka? Was he waving it over is head? Was it a pistol, strapped [...]

CNN contributor David Frum caught Bill O’Reilly‘s eye yesterday on Reliable Sources, when he went after Fox News for being a bad influence and agent of misinformation in the 2012 election. O’Reilly didn’t understand Frum’s “beef” with the network, but Bernie Goldberg had an answer: Frum was merely “an intellectual who is frustrated because he doesn’t have the clout that you have.”

Over the past few years, there’s been much talk about some talk about a kind of “Republican Civil War” between the old dog GOP establishment and the newly energized Tea Party. This past weekend though, Glenn Beck did something impressive when he managed to piss them both off during an appearance on Fox Business Network. He annoyed the establishment by saying they were filled with progressives and that the only difference between Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama was that he was white and he annoyed the Tea Party by asking them if that was why they liked him. And if that weren’t enough to get Republicans angry at him, today Beck said that, were Gingrich to get the nomination, he’d consider voting for a Ron Paul third party run, something many assume would give the election to Obama.

Glenn Beck is very much not a fan of Newt Gingrich. If anyone didn’t yet know that from this interview, he made it very clear Saturday on Fox Business Network when he alleged that Gingrich was so similar to President Obama in his “progressive” ways, that the only reason Tea Partiers would like him over the President would be because of his race. Unsurprisingly, this has caused some anger. Even less surprisingly, one of those angry voices is Andrew Breitbart, a man who is very much not a fan of Glenn Beck.

Glenn Beck has made no secret of how much he dislikes Newt Gingrich– not even to Newt Gingrich’s face. But he has yet to confront his supporters until last night, when he reasoned to Freedom Watch host Judge Andrew Napolitano that there was very little difference between Gingrich and President Barack Obama– so much so that the only possible explanation for Tea Partiers rallying around Gingrich is “Obama’s race.”

Newt Gingrich is not only the Republican presidential frontrunner right now, but he is polling better than the other candidate with the Tea Party. A recent Gallup poll found that Gingrich has 47 percent of Tea Party support, followed by Mitt Romney with 17 percent. Why would such a recognizable insider politician like Gingrich be getting the most support from Tea Partiers? Rachel Maddow examined this very question on her show tonight and concluded that Gingrich’s high poll numbers among senior citizens are helping him in Tea Party polls.

Apparently Limbaugh slept through the entire 2007 Republican primary campaign. Reacting to a self-identified tea party caller that suggested Rep. Ron Paul, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and former Senator Rick Santorum were the only true conservatives left in the race, Limbaugh reacted in shock at the idea that Rep. Paul would be associated with the Tea [...]

“We need a leader not a reader,” responded Herman Cain to questions recently about whether he had the intellectual horsepower to be President. The general attitude against academia was the topic on the table for today’s Up with Chris Hayes, where some panelists went as far as to call the American right “anti-education” rather than simply anti-elitist, with Ezra Klein left to defend the conservative attitude towards education.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has no faith in the Tea Party’s ability to produce a president. This he noted today in a discussion with Christiane Amanpour on This Week, where he lamented the “very tense” tone currently in Washington and attributed some of that to the obstinacy of the Tea Party.

Occupy Wall Street movement is the exploitation of reports of sexual violence by opponents of the movement, particularly conservatives stung by the negative press that the Tea Party received. At Occupy DC Monday, I spoke with several of the protesters to see if they were aware of the issue, what they thought of the coverage, and most importantly, what was being done to keep people safe.

On today’s edition of Red Eye, Andy Levy called out Alan Colmes for not acknowledging that there are members of the Occupy Wall Street protests who have engaged in less-than-civil means to spread their message. Levy brought up the continued acts of aggression and general chaotic nature of some Occupy Wall Street protestors, and asked Colmes why he thinks it is unfair of media outlets to show the more undesirable elements of the movement, when he had no such objections to tea party coverage.

On America Live Friday afternoon, host Megyn Kelly played referee in a shouting match between Fox News liberal embed Alan Colmes and conservative radio host Mike Gallagher over supposed outrage at Democratic support for Occupy Wall Street. Colmes chided Gallagher, and the media, for focusing on the actions of a small number of protesters, but what really set Gallagher off was Colmes’ comparison of OWS to the Tea Party.

The media’s embrace of the Occupy Wall Street movement has been cause for bitter frustration on the right, where the feeling is that the Occupiers are getting a fairer shake than the Tea Party did. Today, the conservative blogosphere is abuzz about a video of an Occupy San Diego protester asking for a moment of silence for the White House…and the guy who put a bullet into a White House window. It’s a strange moment, for sure, but hardly worth the comparisons some are making.

Sarah Palin offered some advice to Mitt Romney, encouraging him to more openly embrace the fiscal and social conservative side of the Republican party, and to develop a more robust relationship with the Tea Party movement. This morning on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, host Martha MacCallum asked Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson and liberal “embed” Alan Colmes to discuss Romney’s strategy in engaging the powerful Tea Party contingent, which Carlson put in remarkably stark terms.

Every now and then, Mediaite likes to take a deeper look at what topics are getting coverage and who’s being ignored by the broadcast and cable news. Fortunately, we have the tools that make this all possible, in the form of TVEyes, a site that chronicles nearly every word uttered on TV. Today’s look inside the television landscape reveals Gloria Allred pushing her client out of the spotlight, a conservative movement possibly popping up on QVC, and the sad dismissal of Gary Johnson by the mainstream media.

Massachusetts candidate for US Senate Elizabeth Warren continues to pioneer the art of grassroots publicity, as another one of her volunteer meetings has spawned a viral sensation. This time, it wasn’t the size of the crowd, but rather, the candidate’s calm handling of a profane heckler that’s making the viral internet rounds. As Warren tries to engage the man, he calls her a “socialist whore,” before attempting a comically flubbed storm-out.

As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to refuse to budge from lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, tonight on the O’Reilly Factor resident media critic Bernie Goldberg took a look at how the media has treated the movement. Ultimately, he gives guest host Monica Crowley a grim prognosis for the media’s chances at being fair towards the movement in the same way they were (or were not) to the Tea Party: arguing that “the storyline is set in stone,” he concludes “there is no hope for them.”

“Tea Party Candidate” Rep. Michele Bachmann is having a bit of a problem convincing the people she claims to represent that she should be their leader, at least if the leadership of American Majority is any indication. The president of that organization, Ned Ryun, released a statement today imploring Rep. Bachmann to drop out of the race, calling her a “back bencher” and warning she could hurt the movement. In response, the Bachmann campaign suggested Ryun was in the tank for Rick Perry, and played down his influence in the Tea Party.

Bill O’Reilly was in rare form last night. After a “Talking Points Memo” segment going after the Occupy Wall Street protests for “demonizing capitalism” and “show[ing] the world the cops are fascists,” O’Reilly welcomed his panel, and refused to let guest Leslie Marshall speak much after she compared the role of George Soros on the left to that of the Koch brothers on the right.