“I thought I had safe seat!” replied Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT), the three-term Utah senator, knocked out by a Tea Party challenge at the state’s nominating convention, drawing laughs from the audience.

The Tea Party’s most famous Republican victim, Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE), sat two seats to Bennett’s left, rounding out the team of electoral losers. The veteran lawmaker’s frontrunner Senate campaign was cut short in by a primary loss to Christine O’Donnell in September.

“I was taken out in a primary by a woman who was not a witch,” he deadpanned. “It was very unexpected—she had no real background in Delaware. It was a Tea Party movement, and they came in and energized a certain percentage of the Republican Party.”…

Cable news and blogs (“the pseudo-press” as Castle put it) came under frequent fire from Democratic and Republican panelists alike, who blamed Fox and MSNBC for polarizing viewers with ideologically driven coverage. Edwards went after the press for filling the news hole with a glut of sound bites from outrageous political figures.

“I bet Michele Bachmann and Alan Grayson have gotten more national TV coverage the last two years than the four of us combined in our nearly 80 years of service,” Edwards said. “No wonder our approval rating is at 11 percent. That’s all it is the American people see.”