They won by political harassment of the TEA party by the MSM and the IRS. Getting their attention was not hard, we just didn't expect them to fight this dirty, nor did we handle it well once they did. We'll see if anything can be done for 2014, I'm not sure the fall out of these new revelations will help us or them more.
Lake, I hate to differ, but I think we beat ourselves. None of the harassment you speak of stopped us from demonstrating, and that is the one thing that was actually moving the needle.
I understand that the underhanded oppression of the Tea Party from federal agencies put a damper on right-wing political activism, but that was a new front for the Tea Party, and had yet to bear fruit. We were making gains just doing what we were doing, and would have made a lot more, had we just kept it up.