Was anyone else pushed to the Left by the Tea Party?

[DevotedDemocrat]

Before the rise of the Tea Party, my views as a younger teen would probably have been called Conservative. I supported President Bush loyally because I believed it was patriotism to fully support your President. By the time I really got interested in politics it was 2008 and Obama was in the spotlight. The Tea Party was rising as well. The more I read of the Tea Party and their ideas and aims, including the undoing of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, elimination of the minimum wage, destruction of labor unions and elimination of regulations almost altogether, I realized that Conservatism meant giant steps backward for American society to a time of red baiting, laisse faire economics and evangelical religion. While I was learning more and more about politics, I was also learning more and more about history, and in being educated about events such as the Triangle Shirt Waist Fire, I realized what America was facing if the Tea Party fulfilled their agenda. I also leaned about the New Deal and Great Society in depth and how they both transformed American society in great ways. As the Tea Party came to dominate the GOP, I realized it was no longer the home of good men like Ike, Nelson Rockefeller, Gerald Ford, John Connally, and that even good moderates like Bob Dole and George HW Bush were no longer welcome. As I learned more about the Tea Party and more about the alternatives, my views pushed further and further to the left, and now I'm a New Dealer, a devotee of the Great Society, a supporter of Obama with my only regret brig I couldn't vote for him in 2008. Romney seemed like a return of sanity to the GOP and he seemed to be an old fashioned Republican, and I was tempted to support him until he caved in to te Tea Party.

Did the Tea Party help push anyone else toward the Left?