WASHINGTON — A few weeks back, the Tea Party was little more than a relic of political history, and its former superstars such as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann were lost in a sea of irrelevance. Now the Obama administration has gotten the Tea Party started again.

The trio of scandals that are rocking Washington smack of the exact kind of government overreach and abuse of power that fueled the movement in the beginning. Suddenly, Tea Party darling and likely presidential hopeful Rand Paul is selling out speaking events from Iowa to New Hampshire, and Palin’s tweets are making headlines again.

The outrage over the IRS’ Tea Party scandal, the fallout over the Benghazi attacks and the Justice Department’s shocking seizure of news reporters’ phone records would not be enough to permanently resurrect a political movement that had fallen so far out of favor. Unfortunately for the president and his party, these scandals are merely the appetizers for the main course that could put Tea Partiers back on the political map: the health care law.

The day before Friday’s House vote to repeal ?Obamacare — the House’s fifth vote to scuttle the law entirely and its 37th effort to kill at least part of the measure — Tea Party leaders and their supporters rallied in Washington like it was 2009.

“Many people said this issue was dead. Many people have said that Obamacare is here to stay,” Minnesota Rep. Bachmann said Thursday as she was flanked by Tea Party leaders in front of the U.S. Capitol. “We are here as the people’s representatives, as real people from across the United States, to say this issue is now revived!”

And that revival of anti-Obamacare sentiment is just what could resuscitate the Tea Party. The House measure will die in the Democratic-controlled Senate, but the still-unpopular health care law’s most controversial provisions — including the individual and employer mandates — are set to go into full effect in less than a year. That leaves the administration open to a Tea Party attack that could leave Obamacare critically wounded — and give conservatives a valuable rallying cry ahead of the midterm elections.

Obamacare’s success rests largely on states’ willingness to participate, which is why Obama is still working so hard to sell the 3-year-old law to the American public. But a growing number of governors have vowed to fight the effort by refusing to set up health care exchanges or participate in the law’s Medicaid expansion in their states. This sets up a disastrous scenario that has even Democrats like U.S. Sen. Max Baucus openly expressing fears of a looming “train wreck.”

Whether the Tea Party’s surge is a mere blip in its flat line or a long-term phenomenon, it’s a headache for the White House and no cure seems to be in sight.