No disagreement that in some quarters, locally, the TEA Party is doing well. What the media and Barry did was successfully remove TEA Party congressmen from meaningful leadership in the House. This got us NOWHERE on a national level.
I think the House leadership/GOP-e, to their eternal discredit, blunted the effectiveness of the TEA Partiers while the Democrats just sat back and watched. It seems to have escaped the “leaderships” notice that, were it not for the 2010 TEA Party sweep, they would still be in the minority. (Of course, Boner and company may actually prefer sucking hind tit—No hard decision making or heavy lifting.)