So powerful in 2010, the Tea Party this time around has been missing in action

TAMPA - Two years ago in the midterm elections, the Tea Party dominated the conversation -- and the results at the polls. 

But this time around,  with the presidency at stake, the Tea Party is making very little noise.  And that's making some people wonder if the Party's over.

With Sarah Palin at the helm, and a legion of newly energized voters, the Tea Party wielded enormous clout in 2010, sending favored sons and daughters like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Nikki Haley of South Carolina to Congress.

The defeats of Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell show that  they didn't bat 1.000, but in this election cycle, the Tea Party seems to be riding the bench.

Less than 30 days from the Florida primary and Tampa Tea Party leader Sharon Calvert is still undecided.

"There is no candidate, at least at this point, that the Tea Party appears to have coalesced around," said Calvert, though she did have a favorite.

"I was behind Herman Cain."

And therein lies the problem. Candidates most favored by Tea Party voters, including Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, are either out of the game or losing badly.   Ron Paul, fairly or not, is widely considered unelectable as a Republican. And Tea Party members have serious issues with the current front runner, Mitt Romney starting with "Romney care" enacted during his term as Massachusetts Governor.

The Tea Party fervor has died down for other reasons. Their chosen gubernatorial candidate in 2010, Rick Scott turned out to be a historically unpopular Governor.  The galvanizing issue of high speed rail is dead, and though the national debt is still a hot issue, Creative Loafing political writer Mitch Perry believes the Occupy Wall Street movement has helped call attention to other issues including corporate influence and income inequality.

"It's not all about cutting the deficit and the debt. That's still an important part of it, but it's broadened out and the Occupy Wall Street movement has had a significant affect on the discourse if nothing else they've done so far" says Perry.

Unless some third-party candidate comes forward, it's all but certain that the Tea Party will rally around the eventual Republican candidate in the interest of unseating President Barack Obama.