Empirics prove---the farm bill always requires PC to pass.

The disconnect between this perspective and the Tea Party's has formed a fault line, causing numerous, highly charged political dustups. Foremost among these fights was the effort to defund Obamacare in fall 2013 and the subsequent government shutdown. But other fights — for instance, the attempt to reform the farm bill's massive agricultural subsidies or to transform the federal transportation system rather than bail out the Highway Trust Fund — have followed in the same pattern: The Tea Party has forced establishment Republicans into public debates over proposals unlikely to advance so long as President Obama is in the White House, and the end result has been the kind of temporary yet highly visible inaction that feeds perfectly into a media narrative of Republican obstructionism.

But inaction is not a necessary consequence of such internal divisions. Last year's debate over the border supplemental appropriation, for example, represented Tea Party-instigated conflict at its most constructive. From the start of the discussion about how best to address the border crisis before Congress's summer recess, House conservatives insisted that whatever border-security provisions Congress considered would be woefully inadequate unless passed in conjunction with language ending the White House's unilateral Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy that had drawn so many young migrants on the dangerous journey from Central America to the United States. Pundits warned of the consequences over a fight on a border supplemental, and as the week-long debate proceeded with no clear end in sight, the media asserted that Republicans would pay a price for leaving Washington without addressing the issue.

That's not what happened. Eventually, because conservatives dug in their heels, the Republican leadership relented, asking conservative members to deliver votes for a border package in exchange for a vote on the White House amnesty policies. They didn't disappoint. Republican members left Washington last August having overwhelmingly passed a border bill and a repeal of the executive amnesty. The Senate left town having failed to enact any legislation. Had that outcome been reached a bit sooner, House Republicans might have had a favorable news cycle on their hands.

The border supplemental fight over DACA, like the Tea Party's efforts on the highway trust fund, the farm bill, and the effort to defund Obamacare, was not successful on its own terms. Just as our federal government still plays a major role in local transportation infrastructure financing, doles out massive subsidies to agribusiness, and administers and finances Obamacare, the president's DACA program remains intact despite the summer immigration flare-up.

But to judge the worthiness of these fights only by the immediate outcomes achieved is to misunderstand their real purpose and consequences. Even the messiest of such conflicts can produce strategic dividends that too often go unrecognized by more risk-averse reformers who are largely focused on policy victories achievable in the near-term. Because the farm bill required enormous political capital to pass, Congress is far more likely to consider reforms in the next debate several years from now. The same is true of infrastructure reform. Because House Republicans challenged their leadership to address DACA this past summer, the party has been far better positioned to address the dangers of similar administrative amnesty schemes such as the proposal unveiled by the White House after the November elections. And on the most controversial of all these fights — the effort to defund Obamacare — the failure to achieve immediate success obscured the important long-term victory secured in the process: that the Tea Party successfully forced Republican office-holders to recommit to repeal in the post-2012 landscape and forced the media to treat the law's status as a live issue rather than a settled policy matter. Obamacare opponents are far better positioned to achieve their goals as a result.