The GOP didn't have a damned thing to do with the wave election of 2010. The Tea Party and millions of pissed off Americans made that happen.
If Republicans win big in 2014, it will be because of the grass roots, not the establishment party.
You hit the nail on the head. See the political class knows that a tea party like political entity is dangerous. They first witnessed this with Ross Perot. The GOP took advantage of the wave and got carried along with it. The big challenge is that after winning the GOP decided to go back to governing by the status quo hoping and thinking the Tea Party would die not understanding that the tea party isn’t a party its a view of government its a philosophy shared in part by even more people today than in 2010. The different is now that the Tea Party has been soiled by a media filter.