Democrats and their Leftmedia lemmings have worked for years to discredit the Tea Party as racist anarchists, but in spite of such overheated and ridiculous criticism – or perhaps because of it– the Tea Party had a fairly successful 2013. Right off the bat, 12 House Republicans put Speaker John Boehner on notice by voting against him in the speakership election. That set the stage for some pitched battles in the House where conservatives were able to block some of Obama’s agenda, but until conservatives take the Senate and White House, they can only play defense.

Conservatives in both chambers banded together to defeat gun control legislation that appeared destined to pass Congress after Sandy Hook. Sens. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee promised to filibuster any legislation that infringed on the Second Amendment, and eventually Democrats (at least temporarily) abandoned their quest. These same senators prevented “comprehensive” immigration reform from passing last year too. Something must be done with immigration, but Democrat solutions are always and only about increasing their own voter rolls.

The Tea Party did have its missteps, however, primarily in contributing to a government shutdown over ObamaCare funding. Ted Cruz and Co. were absolutely right that ObamaCare needs to be stopped, but as we’ve already discussed, that victory will have to wait until the GOP occupies the White House and Senate. The unfortunate shutdown episode didn’t accomplish the goal of derailing ObamaCare, and, worse, it distracted from the utter disaster that was the launch of Healthcare.gov. That said, ObamaCare was so great a catastrophe that even a government shutdown couldn’t distract attention from it for long, and we expect the Tea Party to reap the political benefit of the Democrats’ wanton destruction of the U.S. health care system.