Agreed with Flash on this.
The Tea Party is a tool, a tool of fear and terror for those on the right. People were waxing on about the declining influence of the tea party pointing to this year's primaries where successful tea party candidates had declined in their absolute numbers from years before.
But that mistakes the role of the tea party which was never really about forming a government. It was about intimidation to an almost religious cause to defend the angry, stupid, and scared white people and the corporate paymasters. Many were scared the Republican party would veer left searching for the middle voter which is unequivocally moving left as the population becomes more diverse.
Where the tea party is successful and what is essentially its core strategy is not how many they beat but WHO they beat. They go after the big fish and Cantor is the biggest yet. It's also fairly telling that Cantor was at one time a reformist conservative trying to move the party to more technocratic principles. That would not stand for the the ideologues.
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