Here’s the unspoken narrative of the entire recent adventure in Game Theory that was the soon-to-be-terminated government shutdown. The Tea Party is Ba-aaaack!

Oh, RMJ, you kwazy Wingnut! How can you speak such blasphemy? The GOP got crushed. Emperor Barack I and his own appointed Conde’ Harry Reid got EVERYTHING they could have wanted. The GOP’s polls are in the septic tank. It’s over for you silly neanderthals. OVER!

Except for one thing…The GOP did this to oppose President Obama’s signature healthcare reform – Glorious ObamaCare. On October 1st, the Internet portion of this monstrosity came, saw and 404’d. Reason Magazine describes the carnage.

Two weeks into the launch and its problems only keep multiplying. Consumers still can’t log into the federal exchange website, let alone compare plans, apply for the promised subsidies and buy coverage. The site—whose staggering $634 million construction cost is more than that of LinkedIn and Spotify combined—has already been shut down once for repairs, but the problems persist. Thing are so bad that the administration won’t even reveal basic information about enrollment rates. Nor will it make its IT folks available to explain the technical glitches, insisting that “pent up demand” is overwhelming capacity.

Oh, and Senator Cruz basically made the Democrats fight for a whole bunch of things that they already had. And as for poll issues that sound just wrong, check out how David Pryor, Mark Begich and Mary “I’d vote for ObamaCare Again” Landrieu are doing lately. That’s three Red State Dem Senators with Lincoln Chafee 2006 re-election poll numbers.*

So obviously John McCain and Peter King both popped a vessel over what Senator Cruz did to the Republicans. John McCain wants Ted Cruz and Mike Lee held personally responsible for the government shutdown. According to him, elections have consequences. One only wishes he would have acted like it in 2008.

Peter King just about treats Ted Cruz the way he used to treat opponents of the War in Iraq. He claims Ted Cruz strengthened ObamaCare. Really? What he did was demonstrated in bold relief which members of both the GOP and the Democratic Party will most aggressively support it as it 404’s it’s way across cyberspace on it’s way to signing up 1.7% of the people it was intended to cover. The worse this rout becomes, the smarter Ted Cruz looks in comparison to John McCain and Peter King.

What just happened here was a wake-up call to the previously quiescent Tea Party. Red State Dems who champion ObamaCare and Republicans that are too weak such as Mitch McConnell are going to spend the entire time between now and November of 2014 running for their lives like a QB behind the Oakland Raiders’ Offensive Line. A whole bunch of Sunshine Conservatives now fear the fact that the Tea Party is now back. They are not happy campers. Things just got kicked up a notch. People can’t just pretend they are Conservative anymore. That explains the incoherent rage of John McCain and Peter King.

*-Senator Chafee was decisively unelected that year.