“The consequences of having no Tea Partiers in Congress would have been diabolical”
Yes. We never could have gotten a great deal like this without the Tea Party. Back in the Decade of the RINOs, the 2000’s, we would have had a bipartisan coalition that would have raised taxes and protected all the Democratic programs. “Republican” Senators Orrin Hatch and John McCain would have co-sponsored it, and taken turns holding hands with their “good friend” Ted Kennedy.
Well...now with the Super Congress 12 making deccisions on cuts, that shuts the Tea Party out. They will not have representation there.