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Is the Tea Party dead? Dave Weigel points out that, unlike 2010, Tea Party challenges to Republican incumbents have gone nowhere this year. Once vulnerable Senate candidates like Orrin Hatch, Richard Lugar, and Olympia Snowe now look pretty safe. But that’s only because, for all practical purposes, they’ve abased themselves so utterly to the Tea Party’s demands:

The Tea Party, the Club for Growth—the whole movement has succeeded in driving Republicans further to the right. Nuking a few moderates in primaries was only part of that—a great story for the horse-race media, but not something that would keep up as the GOP was purified….Republicans seem to have figured this out. It’s increasingly likely that no incumbent Republican will lose a primary to a Tea Partier in 2012. The movement can consolidate its gains. Safe districts and the fear of primaries do more to keep Republicans straight than the occasional wins.

I think this was always the endgame for the Tea Party. Just like every other fluorescence of right-wing activism over the past 50 years, its destiny was to flare up, get incorporated into the Republican Party, and then die out. The big difference this time has been just how complete its incorporation has been. Ultra-conservative flare-ups in the past have been increasingly potent — the John Birch Society was more successful than the Liberty League, the Gingrich-inflected Clinton conspiracy theorists were more successful than the Birchers, and the Tea Party in turn has been more successful than the Gringrichites — which has brought us to the point where there’s really no meaningful distance between the ultras and the Republican Party establishment. The Tea Party really is dying away, I think, but only because their victory has been so total. For the time being, anyway, they control the Republican Party from top to bottom.

But for how long? Good question. Look me up in another decade or so and I’ll let you know.