In the Federalist Papers, James Madison promised that a large republic with a representative government would avoid the “instability, injustice and confusion” that had plagued many nations in Europe. In a representative government, he reasoned, disruptive factions would be unable to gain sufficient power to dissolve the social contract. The people’s representatives would not necessarily be paragons of virtue, but they would be less likely to succumb to “local prejudices and schemes of injustice.” In the 225 intervening years, Madison has been proven correct, with two great exceptions. One was the Civil War. The other was the 16-day government shutdown of October 2013.

The shutdown’s precipitating cause—President Barack Obama’s health care reform—was, of course, not as morally consequential as slavery. And yet, the shutdown presented an existential threat to the country—the prospect of a breakdown in the national government, a diminishment in America’s standing in the world, and a global financial disaster.

The prime agitators were a small group of right-wing lawmakers identified with the Tea Party who had no interest in negotiating with President Obama unless he was willing to defund or delay implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Along with grassroots Tea Party groups and elite conservative organizations in Washington, these politicians formed a political battering ram against any prospect of compromise. Until House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell finally defied this faction, the United States stood poised on the edge of calamity.

The same forces hope to create more crises—this winter, when the budget comes up for another vote and when the debt ceiling needs to be raised, and again and again until the administration or the country buckles. “Unfortunately this time the outcome ended with the Ruling Class in D.C. forcing their will on the American people, but this fight is not over,” the Tea Party Patriots declared soon after the impasse was resolved. “We have vowed and stand by our word to leave no stone unturned until we stop the harms from Obamacare and exempt the American people from this ‘train wreck’ legislation.”

My best guess is that they will be unable to cause such chaos a second time. In fact, the Tea Party’s failure to wring concessions from the Obama administration—and the palpable damage it inflicted on the Republican Party—may even presage the end of this political bloc. By 2016, the Tea Party may have gone the way of the religious right of the 1990s or the anti-immigrant Minutemen of the 2000s. And yet the question remains whether the Tea Party’s demise will produce a kinder, gentler, more cooperative America—or whether its constituents will regroup and again threaten a descent into political and social disorder.