CNN jumps the shark with the tea party.

After watching last weeks Tea Party Debate it became obvious to me that CNN has in fact jumped the shark. Or more accurately the Tea Party has and CNN has gone with them.
Because it seems obvious to me it makes it harder to explain but I think it comes down to a lack of DIRECT pandering. The candidates were definitely keeping the general election in mind in their answers. One would expect that at a Tea Party Debate republicans would pander towards Tea Partiers. The power of the Tea Party is defined on their influence in primaries but it looked to me like all the candidates were more afraid of giving Obama ammunition than they were of the Tea Party.
The reason I think CNN is going along with the Tea Party is that their credibility is starting to crumble in the face of an audience that wants news that reinforces their beliefs. Fox has Republicans, MSNBC has Democrats, and I think CNN sees the Tea Party as their niche. I could be wrong but the fact that they had a CNN debate on 9/12 and put Tea Party in the title seems telling. I don't watch CNN (other than GPS) so I don't know how extensive this Tea Party grab is on a daily programming but I do know that they had a Tea Party rebuttal when other networks were having airing the official Republican party rebuttal.