Well, I'd call the Virginia elections a huge victory for the Tea Party. Why? McAuliffe was up by damn near 17 to 20 percentage points two weeks ago. Then what happened, or got all of the media attention? Obamacare. A huge rallying point of the Tea Party (and Ted Cruz). The actual margin was 3.5 percent. If the election was originally scheduled to be held next week, or if the RSCC had put in the same amount of money they did in 2009, Cuccinelli wins, and we'd be talking about the Tea Party wave that will be happening in 2014. As it is now, there's a lot of deniers out there, and that will make it that much sweeter when the Tea Party Republicans both take back the party from the Old Guard, take the Senate by a huge margin (16 Senate Democrats up for reelection in 2014 had a two-hour closed-door meeting with the Obamessiah yesterday, because they're scared about what Obamacare is doing to their reelection chances, which means that there will be 1-3 more that will fall, on top of those 16), and increase their lead in the House.
Then 2016 . . . I think that whoever the Republican nominee is, he'll have to have the backing of the Tea Party to get anywhere.
ETA: I thought that the number of concerned Senators was 12--it wasn't. It was 16. Numbers edited accordingly.