Karl Rove has two pieces of sage advice for the Tea Party protesters. First, he cautions that they should maintain their independence from both parties and “and instead influence both parties on debt, spending and an over-reaching federal government.” And independence, he says, is wise for the Republican party as well. (“The GOP cannot possibly hope to control the dynamics of the highly decentralized galaxy of groups that make up the tea party movement. There will be troubling excesses and these will hurt Republicans if the party is formally associated with tea party groups.”) Second, Rove advises the Tea Party protesters to “begin the difficult task of disassociating themselves from cranks and conspiracy nuts. This includes 9/11 deniers, ‘birthers’ who insist Barack Obama was not born in the U.S., and militia supporters espousing something vaguely close to armed rebellion.”

The other half of the equation, of course, is how politicians who share the Tea Party protesters’ agenda (generally, fiscal conservatism) should approach them while maintaining their electoral viability with Republicans and swing voters who are fleeing the Democratic party. There are, I would suggest, two ways to go — and it is not clear which one will be successful. There may be figures like Sarah Palin who in essence have become one of them and embody their populist ethos. As the champion of a growing, vibrant movement, a Palin-like figure can then build outward, scooping up voters who share small-government policy goals, if not all the anti-elite, anti-media attitudes the Tea Parties embody. Alternatively, there are candidates like Scott Brown and Bob McDonnell who appealed to but did not identify with the Tea Parties. They set forth a bread-and-butter agenda of fiscal conservatism and assembled a Center-Right coalition that was successful in states that had only a year or so earlier voted for Obama and Democratic congressional candidates.

The danger of the first model is that the candidate can become marginalized and find it difficult to pivot to a broader electorate in a general election race. The danger in the second is that those candidates lack a core base of supporters with fervor and faith. We will have to see how this plays out in 2010 and 2012 should the Tea Parties continue to build momentum. But one thing is certain: the movement has evolved past the point at which it can be derided, mocked, and ignored. And conservative politicians had better figure out a game plan to sweep up its participants.