I thought it was the people who decided who should represent them, not the representatives. The base has to coalesce to show these rinos who is in charge. At the same time, with both the GOPe, and the Democrats attacking the “Tea Party,” we have to be careful of allowing them to create an actual group identity, and to make it more caustic than the Republican brand.
The Tea-party has received a plethora of advice that forming a third party is deleterious to conservative goals, so the Tea-party has worked as a part of the GOP. Their intra-party rivals, the GOPe it seems are now forcing a third party alternative to the GOPe. I have not seen a poll, but I suspect that the GOPe has the lowest approval rating of any political group in Washington PC, below the media maligned tea-party and the media venerated democrats of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. The GOPe if it continues this tactic will be on the endangered species list soon, but not soon enough for me.