It’s dead:

“The Tea Party movement is dead. It’s gone,” says Chris Littleton, the cofounder of the Ohio Liberty Council, a statewide coalition of Tea Party groups in Ohio. “I think largely the Tea Party is irrelevant in the primaries. They aren’t passionate about any of the candidates, and if they are passionate, they’re for Ron Paul.”

Littleton is one of the many who have endorsed the Texas congressman; he blames the other GOP candidates for the lackluster energy they have generated in the grassroots that hosted a revolution two years ago.

“Not Romney” is the most popular candidate among his fellow activists, Littleton says, though no one can agree who “Not Romney” is. Without an agreement on that score, the real Romney has coasted to easy victories in New Hampshire, Florida, and Nevada, even winning a clean 50 percent of the Tea Party vote in Nevada on Saturday night while the other 50 percent split themselves among Paul, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum.

Mark Meckler, founder of the Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s largest Tea Party coalition, also says the Tea Party isn’t playing a role in picking the nominee. But that is by choice, not by accident, he says.

[The Daily Beast]

Oh hey! One of your tumblr’s will be co-hosting (ok, moderating) a live chat during tonight’s GOP CNN/Tea Party Express presidential debate. We start at 8pm EST. Howard Kurtz & Lloyd Grove will be the real co-hosts, chatting with readers about Perry, Romney, Paul, Santorum, Cain, Huntsman, Gingrich, and Bachmann—who is probably facing an uphill, must-win scenario going into tonight’s debate. Hope you can join us for the action. These are usually pretty fun.

Now that the election is over, an uneasy libertarian-Christian conservative alliance shows its cracks.

Loving this design. Also the story, by Sharon Begley, on the psychology of an angry electorate.

They say they’re mad as hell, though some pundits see them as simply mad. Ten Tea Party movers and shakers you should know about.

In many ways, [the Tea party is] a fascinating, vibrant reflection of America’s current fixations and frustrations. But given that the vast majority of the movement’s favored candidates have lost their Republican primary battles—and given that the few candidates who’ve won, like Rand Paul and Sharron Angle, seem to be underperforming against vulnerable Democratic opponents—there’s little reason to think that it will be a major electoral force any time soon.

Andrew Romano and Dan Stone, on the Tea Party’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Night