The tea-party movement will change the GOP.

Michael Barone "The Republicans for the last two decades have been a party whose litmus tests have been cultural issues, especially abortion. The tea partiers have helped to change their focus to issues of government overreach and spending. That may be a helpful pivot, given the emergence of a millennial generation uncomfortable with crusading cultural conservatism.It’s not clear whether the tea partiers’ influence on Republicans will last as long as the anti-war cohort’s imprint on Democrats has. But their concern — the fact that government spending is on a trajectory to increase far beyond revenues — seems likely to persist. In which case a spontaneous movement that no one predicted and that no one person led could end up, again, reshaping one of our great political parties."