Why is the Tea Party the Worst AND Best Thing To Happen To Obama?

Anticlimactic as this statement is by now, I think the worst AND best thing to ever happen to or for President Obama is... THE TEA PARTY! Hear me out.  Look it up and it appears to have formed almost in direct response to Obama's election as of early 2009.  A year later, it proved a pain for Obama because it almost singularly robbed Obama's Democrats and even a few "mainstream" Republicans of their seats in the House.  After a while, however, it became pretty clear to everyone but Tea Party members and supporters that whatever the so-called "Republican" House had to actually offer would never see the light of day as long as Obama and his ilk controlled the other two branches, so it reduced their tactics to sometimes comical, yet expensive sideshows (like Ted Cruz's fight to repeal Obamacare during the government shutdown last year) and made them little more than obstructionists.  Nevertheless, despite obscenely low approval ratings, Obama's re-election and no change in the Senate's balance of power after 2012, the Tea Party branch of the Republican Party is STILL in charge in Congress!

This is bad for Obama (and fellow Republican Speaker John Boehner, interestingly enough) because it puts everything he does under even more and incredibly intense scrutiny, but there's a reason why it might also have guaranteed him a second term.   I don't think people re-elected Obama because they all enthusiastically embrace all of his notions about changing America and so forth - although there have been documented, fundamental shifts in certain attitudes towards government's role in the economy and healthcare and so forth across the board. Yet, neither do I think these Tea Party people are being voted into and kept in Congress as part of a fluke or because people think they might actually get the upper-hand.

For better or worse, a majority of Americans probably do not vote - certainly not in midterm elections and not even in Presidential ones - and of those that do, the mob mentality pretty much rules.  Two mobs face off (bear with me here) and whichever one looks like it has a better chance of winning and of not messing things up even more is the one most likely to get the most votes. Since most people are wary of politicians, in general - regardless of their political persuasions otherwise - most voters, particularly the swing voters, are not looking for who is "good" but, rather, who is WORSE. When those few and far between that aren't going to just blindly vote the same way over and over again find who is or, rather, looks worse, they then vote the other way. It must come down to which side gets the most converts on which issues nowadays because I find it hard to believe that one party has so much more of America's confidence than the other, particularly when rhetoric and some policy proposition is so extreme.  It may look that way sometimes, but the left has ALWAYS controlled the popular media in America (one of the earliest TV interviews EVER features Eleanor Roosevelt criticizing then-Senator Nixon over his prosecution of Alger Hiss) while the right has long had footholds in the business and, more recently, the religious communities. Which American subculture you belong or are closest to - Hollywood or Wall Street, to put it more directly - likely decides who you think most represents America at its core, past, present and future, regardless of actual facts and political statistics (many of which are skewed for roughly the same reasons).

Obama got re-elected because everyone was scared to death that Romney would start a war with Iran and/or North Korea and sever just about every proverbial purse string connected to social programs, etc., and that just wasn't acceptable while unemployment numbers are still so high and, again, those fundamental shifts were/are still occurring.  More than that, he's the one that came up with the original form of the Affordable Care Act in the first place (or, rather, the Heritage Foundation came up with it for him), a bill that one side rejects while the other supports ONLY as a fantasy stepping stone towards socialized medicine - and since personality matters in elections, nobody was going to vote for someone that wealthy and seemingly "out of touch" and void of recognizable personality when coming out of a major recession. At the same time, I don't think it was hard to predict in 2012 that, should Obama be re-elected, not only was he likely to step up his more personal agenda, but his supporters would demand it.  Sure enough, practically his entire second inaugural speech is about Obama's vision of America and the way he'd leave it after his second term; about civil rights in the future coming in the form of increased government enforcement of fairness and equality laws as well as a stance of pro-immigration and what would become a foreign policy dedicated to ensuring that America move closer to and promote, in his words, "global norms." Socially, economically, etc., and it's no secret that up until they found out Obama's drones were spying on everyone, much of the rest of the world heartily celebrated Obama's initial election because his ideas about healthcare, for example, have been almost identical to much of Europe's.

So why is the Tea Party faction still in control of the House of Representatives - THE legislative and arguably most powerful branch of the government, itself - when it has held approval ratings in the teens and below since before 2012? Besides the obvious stench of decay emanating from what used to be a more stable and dignified Republican Party, the Tea Party faction is perfect for keeping Obama in check because even if they don't make any actual gains, they are effective at limiting Obama's gains whenever he appears to be getting too full of himself.  It has nothing to do with policy, at least not from them.

American voters nowadays may be riled up, but they're not idiots.  They know that both sides have wandered off the reservation, politically speaking, but it is for that very reason that - given the choice - they want the so-called "fringe" segment of the Republican Party to keep what is now the entire Democratic Party behind Obama in check... even if, generally speaking, they actually like Obama more. Liking someone and trusting them, though - NOT the same things. ;)