Two weeks ago, when Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat held for four decades by Teddy Kennedy, it was the top story all over cable news and in newspapers across the country. The surprising upset fit the narrative that the “liberal” media is developing about the 2010 elections. They see Brown, who held fundraiser sponsored by a Boston tea bagger group, as a harbinger of the rise of the right-wing fringe and the collapse of the liberal ascendancy.

Contrast that with news this week from the Illinois primary in which liberal Republican Rep. Mark Kirk trounced four tea bagger candidates, including Andy Martin, a leading birther conspiracist. The combined vote for the four tea bagger candidates was 36 percent. Kirk kicked their collective asses with 57 percent.

Martin — who created a controversy in December by releasing ad in which he asserted that there was a “rumor that Kirk is a homosexual” — got 5 percent of the vote.

Despite Martin’s bona fides as a racist and anti-semite, and his 2008 lawsuit against the state of Hawaii over its policy of not releasing birth certificates, including Pres. Obama’s, he was not the favorite candidate among what might be called mainstream tea baggers. Their guy was real-estate developer Patrick Hughes, who received the personal (not party) endorsements of 18 county pro-tea bagger GOP chairpersons and of radio host Mark Levin, a Rush Limbaugh wannabe. Hughes received about 19 percent of the vote.

Former judge Don Lowery and a local politician named John Arrington each had tea bagger support. They rt took 9 percent and 3 percent of the vote, respectively.

Another candidate, Kathleen Thomas, who was apparently not affiliated with the tea bagger movement, received 7 percent of the vote.

While the corporate media has ignored the drubbing taken by these tea baggers from Mark Kirk, whom they campaigned against as a recently divorced, gay, liberal RINO, the tea-bagger propaganda-sphere tried to excuse the losses by saying that tea baggers lost because voters split their support (although the combined votes for the four tea baggers was 21 points less than Kirk’s) and by suggesting that Illinois is too liberal to be tea bagger country — but is it really more liberal than Massachusetts?

Right wingers were also embarrassed in the Illinois governor’s race Republican primary. Adam Andrzejewski, who was endorsed by top Republican propagandists Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh came in fifth, with just 14.5 percent of the vote.

Rep. Kirk will face off against Democrat Alex Giannoulias, the state treasurer, in the general. The governor’s race is still too close to call. In the Democratic primary, Gov. Pat Quinn and Comptroller Dan Hynes have 50.4 percent and 49.6 percent of the vote, respectively. In the Republican race, three of the seven candidates each have roughly 20 percent of the vote.

Since winning the Massachusetts senate seat, Scott Brown has tried to distance himself from the tea bagger movement — despite having held a fundraiser on Jan. 2 that was sponsored by the Greater Boston Tea Party. In an interview with ABC News’ Barbara Walters on Jan. 31, he said he disagreed that the tea party movement had been influential in his victory.