MARKETWATCH: How The Tea Party Beat Occupy Wall Street. “Whatever your opinion of either movement, there’s no denying that the tea party is more focused and influential. You don’t see but a handful of candidates such as Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders in Vermont, pandering to Occupy Wall Street.”

Actually, I think the problem is that Occupy Wall Street beat itself. The Tea Party has, quite consciously, stuck to its small-government/fiscal responsibility message and hasn’t gotten lured into lots of side issues. And it has been relentlessly bourgeois, orderly, and neat, leaving the sites of its protests famously cleaner than when the protesters arrived. OWS, on the other hand, presented a grab-bag of issues ranging from the sensible — get rid of “too big to fail” — to the idiotic. Then there were all the rapes, thefts, killings, and sanitation issues . . .

Some related thoughts here.