Schadenfreudean fun on a slow Monday night thanks to P.J. Gladnick and Newsbusters, who — virtually alone among media — remembered that the left’s answer to the tea party held its big shindig yesterday. Luckily, much of the proceedings was captured on video; unluckily, some of the clips have as few as, um, 10 views. Speakers included Lawrence Lessig, Mark McKinnon, and John “Wingnuts” Avlon. (Tea Party Express Chair Amy Kremer was invited to speak as part of a panel but had to cancel due to illness.) Why, after all the ridiculous hype earlier this year about how many Facebook followers the group had, etc, has the press suddenly bailed on them? Well, remember that the buzz about CP was cooked up around the time that ObamaCare was nearing passage, back when the meme du jour about tea partiers was that they were a violent racist zombified rabble. The CP, being “moderate” and allegedly devoted above all things to civility, was held up as a study in contrasts. But the racism smear against TPers isn’t as current as it used to be, mainly because the tea party’s spent most of the past few months battling centrist Republicans instead of the sainted left. Now the chief knock on them is that they’re a highly effective puritanically conservative machine, purging moderate GOPers like Lisa Murkowski and Mike Castle and replacing them with supposed fanatics like Joe Miller and Christine O’Donnell. Suddenly, the study in contrasts doesn’t look so good for the Coffee Party. Which would you rather be part of, some sort of Facebook-driven kaffeeklatsch or a movement that’s tossing the bums out of Washington? That’s why you don’t hear about it anymore.

Anyway, two clips for you below, one from last month hyping the CP mega-meetup and the other from the convention itself that’s self-explanatory. Speaking of centrists getting organized politically, I don’t want to start any hearts fluttering but there has been talk on Twitter over the past week or so of holding the first ever … RINOcon. Imagine the roster: Frum, Brooks, Buckley, Kathleen Parker-Spitzer, Meghan McCain, and a cavalcade of moderate candy-ass bloggers. Maybe even a cameo from Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins? Dude, I think it could happen. Exit question: Should we call it … the Cocktail Party?