Dave Weigel: For Some Tea Party Leaders, “Fall From Idealism Is Pretty Rapid”

Keith Olbermann has found some strange rhetoric in the interior memos of the Joe Miller campaign (who defeated Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the Alaska Republican primary. “So far,” the note explained, “the Lord has always provided the money.” Except there is now evidence that Miller’s campaign has ties to K Street, and he’s not the first Tea Party-affiliated candidate to fall in the grasp of the larger GOP.

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: