Democrats like to blame the Tea Party for everything because it satisfies their conviction that the GOP is captive to extreme interests; the Republican establishment does so because it allows elites to evade blame for the party’s electoral and philosophical failures. I don’t want to be the latest in the long line of writers to pronounce the Tea Party on its deathbed, only to have it flare up and prove me wrong. As Skocpol rightly notes, the Tea Party’s widely distributed, passionately engaged grassroots network combines with the clout of well-funded advocacy groups to create a potent squeeze on lawmakers from above and below. Last summer’s fight over defunding Obamacare, and the government shutdown that resulted, showed that, if anything, the movement’s activists have only become more aggressive in wielding this power. Incumbent Republican senators, even quite conservative ones like Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn, face primary challengers who see them as excessively conciliatory; House Speaker John Boehner seems helplessly in thrall to his caucus’s most radical members and the outside agitators that egg them on. (Or he did—more on that in a bit.) Cruz clearly isn’t going anywhere, and the next election could well deliver him still more allies in his Washington-based war on Washington.

Nonetheless, in relative terms, I see a Tea Party whose influence is gradually declining, not increasing. Its clout in Congress appears to be on the wane. Its ability to win intra-GOP contests is being newly challenged. And the organizational advantages it once enjoyed are no longer so clear-cut. The GOP rank and file that greeted the movement as an exciting infusion of new energy now regard it with weariness and skepticism. The far right, in turn, has focused much of its ire on the Republican Party itself, with increasing threats to start a third-party splinter movement. This seems unlikely to happen, but it reflects Tea Partiers’ frustration at their inability to control the GOP more fully.

We should not, however, expect a waning Tea Party to mean a suddenly rosy political landscape. The Bush years weren’t exactly the glory days of bipartisan compromise, and the parties’ major philosophical differences remain. Well before the Tea Party proved its clout in 2010, Obamacare failed to get a single Republican vote, and cap-and-trade was hung out to dry. And while anguished GOP elites love to wring their hands about how to bring to heel the crazies in their midst, there’s little evidence they’re any better at winning modern elections than the insurgents they disdain.

I have the advantage of writing this just after December’s bipartisan budget deal, the first time Congress has passed a full budget (as opposed to a continuing resolution) since 2009 and a promising signal for bipartisan compromise. The political and legislative landscape now looks very different from the immediate aftermath of the government shutdown, on which many of the symposium’s writers based their conclusions. (In time, this apparent thaw may appear just as temporary and oversold as the shutdown’s effects do now—although it does mean no one, not even Cruz, can shut down the government until at least October, when the current appropriations bills run out.)