My take on the article cited by the OP is that this is not necessarily good news for Democrats. After all, the best thing for them would be for more tension between the TP movement and mainstream Republican leadership. The TP seems to be maturing in that they realize that dying on every hill is not a good strategy. Hence, twice as many voted for the debt extension as voted against it last year. And this after most took an oath to not extend it. As far as TP members having to earn the top leadership posts via lower level office, this is actually good and normal. Its also why the Libertarian party is not a force in modern politics. How many Libertarians do you know of on county boards or city councils? Many of the TP members started out in local politics. If you really think about it, and no matter what your personal view, the TP movement is pretty amazing. They made up the largest freshman class in over 100 years and they did that without any national party structure and in only 1-2 years.