Also, the Tea Party has so far found a far more effective means of political engagement than protests like these. For better or worse, they've actually gotten involved with electoral politics, and they've had a huge impact.
I don't think they have actually taken it over. The leadership is not aligned with the tea party values. I think we are more at a split-purposes under the same house. To my mind, the 2012 primaries will be the break point.
It really is the worst of both worlds. The existing republican establishment has harnessed the Tea Party's discontent to justify their policies without actually reforming how the party operates. All the tea party caucus can do is occasionally grind things to a complete and utter halt, and the leadership can to a large extent control when and how that happens.
What's the result? Tea partiers aren't going to get what they want (since it's never been on the table to offer them), and they're being used as a weapon to prevent thing that citizens in general agree with (the wealthy should pay more in taxes, the FAA should keep operating, that sort of thing).
Like I said, I do believe the primaries for the 2012 election will tell the story. It either will be business as usual or the leadership takes a beating. I am particulary interested in Hatch's seat.
The leadership can be aligned with whatever it wants; what matters is how they actually vote, and it's a fact that at the moment, the congressional leadership (as well as nearly all of their presidential candidates) is playing the tea party tune.
If the leadership was playing the tea party tune, they would have gone with Ryan's spending cuts instead of the costly debt ceiling raise. The leadership is ignoring the tea parties desires and doing business as usual.
Even without a debt ceiling increase the US wouldn't have defaulted. There were a couple of plans to keep things going. The actions taken increase debt by a rather large amount, so I do believe it was meaningless theater which is pretty much business as usual.