Two views on the show last night about what's going on in the Republican presidential primary. The first, from guest host Chris Hayes, is that the Tea Party is over:
The operating assumption of the political media looking at this race has been it's all about the conservative base searching for the anti-Mitt Romney, the anti-establishment candidate.But that assumption ignores the possibility, which I think is more andmore likely, that it's really not 2010 anymore, that the Tea Party moment is over. That whatever rift there was between the Tea Party and the Republican establishment has apparently been healed.
The second view, from our guest Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post, is the that way Mitt Romney has risen shows the Tea Party has won:
The other thing you've got to think about is that Mitt Romney himself has changed. I mean, he has embraced, as have they all, a lot of what the Tea Party stands for. I mean, this is a guy who's walked away from climate change. He's walked away from mandates on health care. So has Newt Gingrich.
So, in that sense, you could argue maybe that the Tea Party has actually won.
We'll leave this one to you.