personally, i think the tea party is mostly about this split inside the conservative movement:
American Crossroads, Karl Rove-Backed GOP Group, Predicts Stronger Fundraising After Disappointing Numbers
which i link to only because it's recent and short. there's quite a bit of information out there about these people and their nice new political gated community, american crossroads.
the tea party is a show of power.
during the popular front in france (1936) the communist party was able to move very quickly from being a small sectarian group to a mass political party because they were able to make a parallel show of force. at the renault factory at billancourt, they turned a sit-down strike on and off at will--they became a player because they forced their way in the door. to get there, they stepped all over alot of militants to the left of the pcf--and if you ever have occasion to read histories of the popular front, you'll get an introduction.
i think the same thing is going to happen to the tea partiers.
right now, it's more a matter of being alot of rightwing bodies that can be directed to turn out for this or that purposes at more or less this or that time. it matters much less why people turn out than it does that they turn out. given the sweetheart coverage the tea party still gets on faux news and other rightwing outlets, the more they turn out the more legit they look, the more they can become what they look like on tv.
so its an appearance of numbers game the idea of which is to become a numbers game.
rove's vile new conservative organization is not a political party, which means that they're not bound by the already quite weak campaign finance laws. so they also have another interest in not looking quite like a conventional political organization.
and these people have attracted alot of big money.
alot of the deep pockets who were funding the ultra-right before seem to think, from what i've read, that the republican party is in trouble because of the whole actual record of conservative power/bush administration thingy.
and if you look into what rove et al stand for, it's basically a corporate oligarchy. they have no use for democracy. they are what i've been saying the tea party is.
in their dreamiest scenario, i would expect they'd like to see themselves making enough gains alongside the republicans in the mid-terms to paralyze the obama administration altogether. i think they'd rather see a depression, a total collapse of the american economy, than allow obama's administration to govern effectively. because they like power that much.
i think the tea partiers are chumps. usefully incoherent footsoldiers the function of which is to help a very well-funded very right-wing very not-populist conservatism appear to be otherwise.
but we'll see.