Like most everyone else, I didn't see the Eric Cantor loss on my radar, although my radar is a little dim.
But I'm not sure that it really means that the Tea Party is BACK. I think it means that the GOP base is less than pleased with Republicans acting like Democrats. Not to discount the Tea Party, but rather to make the point that the Tea Party really is the GOP base.
It never left.
Hopefully, establishment Republicans understand that better now. There is no conceivable way for the GOP to be successful by alienating this important base.
As my colleague in Colorado, Bob Schaffer, used to say: You don't get elected as Republican by acting like a Democrat.
If you support immigration reform that has no penalties for people who break the law, you just say so. There is room for that in the other Party. But I think we have heard clearly from the GOP base that really we have to get serious about enforcing laws that we pass from immigration laws to Obamacare.
As a party, it does no good complaining about extra legal maneuvers from Obama, when the only real objection the GOP has is that Obama's the one doing it.
The easiest way to create a tyranny is this country is to pass laws and then selectively enforce them, and then encourage people to break the laws. In this way, DC gets to be the ultimate arbiter of who goes to jail for tax fraud and who gets to be Secretary of Treasury. Or who gets to stay in this country--illegally-- and who doesn't.
What do you call a law that everyone ignores?
The law.
Still... no matter what Obama might do with his pen and his phone.