Teabagger fail.

The great thing about last night was it officially made the Teabaggers totally irrelevant.

As you wake up this morning, the tea party has failed because it has surrendered itself into the hands of Romney, Santorum, or Gingrich — all of whom would use government to suit allegedly conservative ends, which is not conservative in and of itself.

It's almost as though the "Tea Party" wasn't a distinct political movement at all -- and just another name for "Bush/Cheney Republican." Shocking, but true.

At least we're all honest about that now. Even Putz.

I THINK HE’S RIGHT: Rand Paul on a third-party run by Ron: The tea party’s better off within the GOP.

Notice he didn't say "with" -- but "within."

UPDATE

Yeah, the jig's up, Teabaggers.

Lesson One: The Tea Party isn't a small government-first movement. It was Sarah Posner who coined the term "Teavangelicals," a little neologism for a simple idea. The Tea Party, she argued, was not some new force of libertarians. It was a new framework for the same conservatives who dominated the GOP a month before the Tea Party began. Iowa may not have been the best place to test this, as its Republicans have always been more economically populist than not, and in the last decades they've been reliable social conservatives. But its Tea Partiers did not demand much economic libertarianism from their GOP. Sixty-four percent of caucus-goers called themselves "Tea Party supporters," and 30 percent of them backed Rick Santorum -- a social conservative who proudly defended his earmarks.