In reality, a lot of people are pragmatists, and quite impure in their conservatism. Superficiality also plays a factor in voting decisions.
Hence, if the Tea Party wants to win, they need an experienced candidate who people will believe can win, and can govern. This person should have the ability to gain the trust of enough voters, and be reasonably well-liked. And ideally, this candidate is as conservative as can be found with all the above traits and abilities.
If you look at the GOP field, you'll notice there is no such candidate running. And the weakest candidates are the Tea Party candidates--Bachmann and Cain.
By what measure do you say that? There is no central national Tea Party (yet). An the weaker candidates may have been early to seek Tea Party endorsement but some of the stronger candidates have been more cautious to court them openly. The effect of the Tea Party movement (if you want to call it that) will decide this election and the future of the country. It is about Patriots stepping forward. And don't ever underestimate the old grey eagles.
LOL! Well put! People are looking for someone whom they perceive to be free of the evil influences of a political career, and thus "like them" and pure, but the problem is that even if such a person could get elected, they would be incapable of governing because they simply wouldn't know how to get things done.
Obama had little real experience in running things but a fair amount of experience in dirty politics, and that's still all he knows how to do. But he came in with an entire hidden ideological team behind him, setting the policies he was supposed to follow, and he treated the US government just as if it were the Chicago machine. He managed to get a lot of the ideological programs through because he simply ignored constitutional US political procedure and stuck to his Chicago background, where everything was decided behind the scenes and pushed through the public approval process using bribery and intimidation. So political experience, for better or for worse, is essential. Maybe next time we can get somebody who respects our process, doesn't think he's king, etc....but still, a candidate can't be a babe in the woods politically.
The problem with any GOP candidate who has actually held any major position or engaged in election politics is that there will be something that can be used as a "gotcha" moment to prove that they are not as purely conservative as that innocent little candidate of people's dreams. I think one of the reasons Palin left the governorship was that she was considering a run in the future and wanted to put some distance between herself and her political past so that she wouldn't have to be running on her record (which was a good one, but I'm sure had things that could be twisted).
I think we've got to keep projecting the principles that actually attract people: a free economy, a free society with small governhment, support for traditional US family and social standards, etc. That's what Reagan did, but certainly on a day-to-day basis, he made a lot of pragmatic decisions that would now get people screaming that he was a RINO.