How The Tea Party Helped To Pass and Protect Affordable Care Act - Ezra Klein

Some credit for the passage of the Affordable Care Act goes to the Tea Party. Harry Reid would likely have lost his majority — and his seat — in 2010 if the Tea Party hadn’t successfully knocked out top-tier challengers in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada and replaced them with more extreme conservatives. Senate Republicans would be much likelier to retake the Senate tonight if Richard Lugar and Sarah Steelman were running rather than Richard Murdock and Todd Akin.

But it’s not just that the Tea Party has been instrumental in helping Senate Democrats hold the majority necessary to protect the Affordable Care Act. It was the primary challenge against the late Sen. Arlen Specter that pushed the Pennsylvanian to switch parties, thus providing Democrats with the crucial 60th vote needed to break the Republican filibuster and pass health reform.

This is an ironic legacy of the Tea Party and the tactics it chose: It arose in ferocious opposition to Obama’s agenda, but by driving Specter out of the party and pushing harsh conservatives over more electable Republican candidates, it gave Senate Democrats the majorities they needed to pass and protect the key accomplishments of Obama’s presidency — and that’s before you get into whether the Tea Party’s influence in the Republican presidential primaries forced Mitt Romney to the right and gave Obama a crucial edge in a close presidential election.

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