Earlier today, Barack Obama spoke in St Louis and said among other things:

You see folks waving tea bags around -- let me just remind them I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care cuts over the long term, how we are gong to stabilize social security. Lets not play games.

There's a very strong possibility that Obama wants to keep the tea party magic flowing, because those "parties" serve his interests. The partiers have no stated principles, they wave loopy signs, and there are so few of them (just 0.1 to 0.2% of Americans turned out) that they'll have no electoral impact whatsoever. The "tea parties" give every leader what they want: a small, ineffective, fringe opposition.

This is akin to, say, Bill OReilly baiting CodePink and then sending out a camera crew to take pictures of their loopy signs at their protest against him.

The "tea party" leaders aren't smart enough to figure any of that out and to create a broad-based movement. Instead, they're just giving Obama what he wants.