Special report: Stuck between the Tea Party and a hard place More Tea Party groups say they'll seek candidates to challenge establishment Republicans

"All of a sudden they stopped taking our calls and were no longer interested in what we had to say," Dake said.

Hoping for meaningful change, they watched as either the same people — Boehner and Cantor — or party loyalists took up leadership positions in the House.

Then came the first real battle of the new Congress that mattered to the Tea Party — cutting spending in the 2011 budget. Instead of $100 billion in cuts the Republicans promised in their "Pledge to America" unveiled last September, Republicans and Democrats agreed on $38 billion.

When the Congressional Budget Office said the real spending reduction was $352 million that set many Tea Partiers boiling.

"They volunteered that damn promise of $100 billion, we didn't ask for it," said Randy Keller of the Bowling Green Southern Kentucky Tea Party. "They seem to think that we can't handle simple math. We in the Tea Party are so angry we can't stand it."

Not raising America's debt ceiling has now taken on even greater importance for Tea Party groups.The April 25 meeting with Boehner and inside accounts of others between House Republicans and Tea Partiers in their districts hint at a party trying to manage expectations ahead of the real debt limit debate. The trouble is while compromise is a trademark of Washington politics, to many Tea Partiers it is a dirty word.

According to Ned Ryun, head of American Majority, which provides training for conservative activists, the Republicans' problem is they mistook their November victory as a sign the Tea Party backed them because its members are conservatives.

"The Republican establishment suffers from a weird belief that somehow the Tea Party will fall in line because it is an adjunct of the Republican Party," he said. "But the Tea Party is not and never will be an arm of the Republican Party."

That leaves Boehner stuck between the Tea Party and a hard place.

If he pushes too hard on cuts, that will rattle the Republican Party's powerful Wall Street wing, potentially roiling the markets and unsettling the broader electorate.

But backing down will also hurt him. "After accusations he didn't do enough in the budget battle, Boehner has to have something real to take back to conservatives or he's in trouble," said James McCormick, a professor of political science at Iowa State University. "He's boxed in between two components of the Republican Party. Obama knows that and is not under the same pressure."

If the Republicans falter, the search for establishment targets will kick into a higher gear — with freshmen, or those elected in 2010 seen as the easiest to unseat as they are new.

"The Tea Party will almost certainly primary those they want to get rid of," said Larry Sabato, a politics professor at the University of Virginia. "They are not out to rebuild the Republican Party. They are out to take over the Republican Party and make it more like the Tea Party."

"If it takes some Republican defeats along the way to make that happen, then that is what they'll do," he added.

'Screw up a free lunch in a soup kitchen'
When night fell on election day last Nov. 2, Tea Partiers across the country were flat out exhausted.

Most activists in the amorphous movement are unpaid. Many have full-time jobs as well as volunteering for the cause.

In the run-up to the election an army of volunteers learned the mechanics of electioneering: from manning phone banks to knocking on doors to get people to the polls.Matt Kibbe, CEO of FreedomWorks, which has provided logistical support for some Tea Party groups, said corporate support for the banking sector bailout, the stimulus package and even for healthcare reform had been unpopular with Tea Party activists.

That has created what Kibbe called "a growing divide" between the Tea Party and corporate America.

'Not qualified to be dog catcher'
Tea Party groups learned some tough lessons in the 2010 election. First, they often split the vote between them when going up against establishment figures.

Hoping to avoid the same mistakes, the Michigan Tea Party Alliance, a coalition of Tea Party groups across the state, is working out guidelines to agree on one challenger per seat.

The other main drawback in 2010 was that Tea Party neophytes often chose candidates whose track records or background made them unelectable.

Possibly the prime example of that was Christine O'Donnell, who beat a moderate candidate in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat in Delaware, but whose campaign foundered in part over embarrassing revelations of dabbling in witchcraft. Some establishment Republicans claim poor Tea Party choices cost them the Senate.

"Let's face it, we had people who were solidly unqualified for dog catcher, let alone the office they were running for," said SoCal Tax Revolt Coalition's Wildman.

"The other thing we are learning now is what happens when naive people get into high office," she added of some of the freshmen the Tea Party helped elect.

"So we are learning how to vet candidates properly."

While being a complete outsider was seen as a plus last year, Tea Party groups are now looking for conservative candidates with a track record and name recognition.

Some in the movement have run or plan to run for office at the local level. But they will not be ready for primetime until they have worked their way up the political ladder, which is some years off at best.

"The biggest challenge we are facing is finding people to run," said Ken Emanuelson of the Dallas Tea Party. "We need an experienced person with a political track record. It may take several cycles to get the right people in place."