3 weeks ago, they were the darling children of the Tea Party.

Today, not so much

Rick Santorum: Sharron Angle & Christine O’Donnell ‘Not Really Who The Tea Party Is’

Rick Santorum, a former GOP senator possibly eyeing a 2012 presidential run from his perch in the Ethics and Public Policy Center, an aviary for conservative social and international issues, spoke recently about the Tea Party’s image and how he believed it had been tainted by some of the movement’s most famous figures.

Candidates such as Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell and Joe Miller — all unsuccessful — were not the true embodiment of the Tea Party, Santorum said in a recent interview with conservative blog Red State. That title goes to people like Ron Johnson, Wisconsin’s newest senator, Santorum argued.

Here’s a transcript of the Red State interview via GOP 12:

“The national media took some candidates who were — in my opinion — yes, they were tea party in the sense that the tea party embraced them and that they shared the principles of the tea party, but that really the best example of a tea party candidate was [Wisconsin Senator-elect] Ron Johnson, who actually got involved because of a tea party.

….. and the other candidates that became the face of the tea party, yes, they embraced the principles of the tea party, but, you know, Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell, and even Joe Miller — they were all active in politics before…. but they weren’t really who the tea party is.