• February 27, 2009 to protest the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) bailout bill signed by President George W. Bush in October 2008 and the ARRA stimulus bill signed by President Barack Obama ten days prior to the protest;
• April 15, 2009 to coincide with the annual U.S. deadline for submitting tax returns, known as Tax Day;
• July 4, 2009 to coincide with Independence Day;
• September 12, 2009 to coincide with the anniversary of the day after the September 11 attacks;
• November 5, 2009 in Washington D.C. to protest the impending Health insurance vote;
• March 14–21, 2010 in Washington, D.C. during the final week of debate on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

On its surface the Tea Party movement snugly fits this pattern. An organized grass-roots revolt, its influence was decisive in the 2010 elections, when an energized base propelled Republicans to enormous gains in the House, helped secure Senate victories for fresh faces like Rand Paul and Marco Rubio and captured as many as 700 seats in state legislatures. The movement drove the Republican agenda to the right, making stars of legislators like Senator Jim DeMint and Representative Paul Ryan, and did much to shift the political debate from the jobless recovery to the growing national debt.

But even in those early, heady days there were signs of trouble.

In February 2010, while a conservative mandarin like William Kristol, the publisher and editor of The Weekly Standard, exulted that the Tea Party protest was “the best thing that has happened to the Republican Party in recent times,” Sarah Palin, the figure who has come closest to tapping directly into the movement’s animating passions, sent a very different message. Her keynote address to the Tea Party convention, held that month in Nashville, Tenn., and broadcast by both Fox News and MSNBC, was widely received (by, among others, David Broder, the consummate Beltway insider), as signaling a possible presidential run. But Ms. Palin’s remarks were essentially those of a supporter of the new insurgency, rather than its leader. Indeed, she explicitly rejected a leading role. “I caution against allowing this movement to be defined by any one leader or politician,” she said. “The Tea Party movement is not a top-down operation. It’s a ground-up call to caution that is forcing both parties to change the way they’re doing business, and that’s beautiful.” True to this sentiment, she chose to remain a media presence rather than a political one and eventually decided not to enter the presidential contest. Already there was a growing schism on the right, its fault lines precisely those Ms. Palin identified, between the elite — including Mr. Kristol and other journalists who had been among her first champions — and the base. This is a strikingly new development on the right. (snip)

It’s a preachment, aimed at the like-minded. The same is true of the Tea Party movement itself. Dick Armey, himself a Beltway insider before he became the chairman of FreedomWorks, one of the most powerful Tea Party organizations, acknowledged as much when he reportedly told the freshman Republicans shortly after the 2010 election: “You don’t owe your office to the majority. You owe your office to the people who put you there.” Those people, however, compose only a fraction of the electorate. And that fraction is divided.

“There is a broad concern about having blown a significant number of races because the wrong candidates were selected,” Law told the New York Times on Saturday. “We don’t view ourselves as being in the incumbent protection business, but we want to pick the most conservative candidate who can win.”

The Victory Project plans to oppose candidates like Christine O’Donnell, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock. Though running in places where Republicans were favored, the tea party-backed candidates lost the general election after defeating moderate Republicans in the primary. Many tea party candidates who were victorious in 2010, such as Allen West and Joe Walsh, also ended up being defeated by Democratic challengers in 2012.

The group’s plans, which were outlined for the first time last week in an interview with Mr. Law, call for hard-edge campaign tactics, including television advertising, against candidates whom party leaders see as unelectable and a drag on the efforts to win the Senate. Mr. Law cited Iowa as an example and said Republicans could no longer be squeamish about intervening in primary fights.

“We’re concerned about Steve King’s Todd Akin problem,” Mr. Law said. “This is an example of candidate discipline and how it would play in a general election. All of the things he’s said are going to be hung around his neck.” (snip)

The retirement announcements last month from Mr. Harkin and Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, have created wide-open Senate races that are expected to attract several prospective candidates. The Conservative Victory Project is working to build a consensus with other groups on candidates who have the strongest chance of winning.

Grover Norquist, who leads Americans for Tax Reform, a fiscally conservative advocacy group that plays a role in Republican primary races, said he welcomed a pragmatic sense of discipline in recruiting candidates. But he said it was incorrect to suggest that candidates backed by Tea Party groups were the only ones to lose, pointing to establishment Republicans in North Dakota and Montana who also lost their races last year.

“People are imagining a problem that doesn’t exist,” Mr. Norquist said. “We’ve had people challenge the establishment guy and do swimmingly.”