At the same time, we won some of the elections with Tea Party candidates that kicked out establishment figures, e.g. Ted Cruz. And, last I checked, establishment Republican Senators lost elections along with the upstarts last year.
Coattails from the presidential election always drive the down-ticket results, and in this case the whole party suffered due to the establishment getting their unelectable pick for the presidential ticket.
That doesn’t mean that the Tea Party shouldn’t consider electability along with ideology as factors in selecting their primary picks. Experience in running campaigns and winning elections does help. Most of the Tea Party candidates that lost made some avoidable rookie mistakes.
If anything, the establishment should work with us on this. They should start giving full backing to grooming candidates who agree with conservative ideology. The message they should take from us is that we will not back down on ideology, so they should work hard to find candidates we will support and which they can then groom to be smoother politicians.