There are some political spin-masters who have been trying to present this year's elections in terms of an "anti-incumbent" sentiment, but being "anti-incumbent" is a non-essential, and those who raise this issue are largely using it as a smokescreen. What they're trying to obscure is the role of political ideas. They don't want us asking: why are voters against these particular incumbents at this particular time? Why do they support the incumbent in some races, even while they reject the incumbent in others?

For example, why did Arkansas voters support incumbent Senator Blanche Lincoln in the Democratic primary last night—even while this very same incumbent is 20 points behind in the polls going into the general election against a Republican challenger?

The answer, of course, is that this year's big political trend has been clearly ideological: the Tea Parties are driven by opposition to the runaway growth in the size and power of government. Those who join the Tea Party movement or sympathize with it generally believe in the ideas of individual rights and constitutionally limited government. But the question is: how big an effect is this movement actually having at the polls?

The results, as I expected, are mixed. They show that the Tea Parties are a political movement, but not a fully fledged political organization—and that limits their impact. For better and for worse—mostly for better—Tea Party organizers and supporters are not practiced political operatives, and they have a lot of learning to do. Tuesday was their primary school. Let's take a look at the lessons.

Let's begin simply by surveying the results.

The best news for the Tea Parties was in Nevada, where Sharron Angle won the Republican nomination to face Majority Leader Harry Reid in November's Senate race. Support from national Tea Party groups was central in helping Angle move up from relative obscurity to defeat the establishment-backed candidate in a three-way race.

Angle and the Tea Party Express, whose April 15 Tax Day endorsement rocketed her from 5 percent support in opinion polls to her shocking primary victory, dismissed arguments she can't beat Reid, saying critics called the GOP icon and late President Ronald Reagan too conservative, as well….

"There's no such thing" as too conservative, Angle said after evoking Reagan. "We want to take our country back to those constitutional principles."…

Angle could not have won without outside help. The Tea Party Express spent nearly $600,000 for her on TV ads and the anti-tax Club for Growth pitched in more than another $600,000—spending as much as the candidate herself. The Tea Party Express said it would spend at least $1 million to try to defeat Reid and the Club for Growth is expected to match that and likely spend even more.

The Tea Parties can also claim another victory in the South Carolina Republican primary for governor. Nikki Haley won just shy of 50% of the vote in a four-way race and heads into a run-off two weeks from now, where she is expected to win against the second-place challenger, who got only 22 percent of the vote. Haley was pushed into the lead by endorsements from Sarah Palin and Jenny Sanford (ex-wife of disgraced outgoing governor Mark Sanford), while her chief opponent, a Republican congressman, was rejected because of his vote in favor of the TARP bailout in 2008.

New Jersey is more of a mixed bag. TIA Daily reader and Tea Party organizer Mark Kalinowski sent me a thorough report.

"Of the six candidates who participated in the May 17th forum [which Mark organized and I moderated—see my comments on the event], two won their primaries easily, as expected: Roland Straten (NJ-8) and Michael Agosta (NJ-9).

"Roland won with over 80% of the vote. Roland had the support of some local tea party groups, including the North New Jersey Tea Party Group (my group) and the Essex County Tea Party Coalition. Roland also had party backing (if you can call it that—let's just say the party tends to essentially ignore Republican candidates in Democrat-leaning districts).

"As for Michael Agosta, he had party backing, which helped him achieve 58% of the vote in a three-way race. To the best of my knowledge, none of the three candidates seeking the Republican nomination in Democrat-leaning NJ-9 had the announced support of any tea party organization, although my guess is that the North New Jersey Tea Party Group's promotion of Michael via his involvement with the May 17th forum helped him to some extent.

"The most exciting part of the evening: as of this writing, with 99% of precincts reporting in NJ-6, Anna Little is exactly 95 votes ahead of the party-backed candidate, millionaire publisher Diane Gooch (6,674 vs. 6,579). [The lead is now 61 votes, 6,730 to 6,669.] So there might be a third winner from the forum, as well. If this happens, it will definitely mean the Tea Party movement in New Jersey succeeded better than general expectations. Anna was a decided underdog—frankly, if I had to guess beforehand, I thought she would get less than a third of the vote. Win or lose, she did better than expected, and the largest factor behind this was vocal tea party support.

"Although forum participate David Corsi (NJ-12) lost, the losing margin—46% for Corsi, 54% for party-backed millionaire Scott Sipprelle—was much, much closer than I would have anticipated. So this closer-than-expected result also showed strength from New Jersey's Tea Party movement.

"All seven incumbents seeking their party's nomination won, including three cap-and-tax Republicans (LoBiondo in NJ-2, Smith in NJ-4, and Lance in NJ-7).

"Forum participant Justin Murphy lost the NJ-3 primary with 40% of the vote to former Philadelphia Eagle Jon Runyan's 60%. While Murphy had the backing of at least two or three Tea Party organizations, it should be noted that Runyan did earn the endorsement of the Independence Hall Tea Party Association, an influential Tea Party group based out of metropolitan Philadelphia and involved in three states (NJ, PA, and DE). Clearly, Runyan's deep pockets, local fame, and party backing played meaningful roles in his victory. Frankly, I'm surprised that Murphy attained as much as 40% of the vote.

"Forum participant Lon Hosford garnered less than 10% of the vote in NJ-7, in a four-way race won by the Republican incumbent (and cap-and-taxer) with 56% of the vote.

"Tea party-backed Alan Bateman lost the NJ-4 Republican primary to a cap-and-taxer, 31%-69%. Clearly, cap-and-tax is not considered by the electorate to be nearly as important as ObamaCare.

"Republican incumbent Rodney Frelinghuysen (who was one of only two of 13 House members from New Jersey to vote "no" on both cap-and-tax and ObamaCare) won his primary with over 75% of the vote against the president of the state's largest tea party organization (The Morristown Tea Party), Rich Luzzi.

"All in all, some wins, some losses, but a better-than-expected result, and particularly so if Anna Little holds on to her slim lead and emerges the victor in the NJ-6 Republican primary."

The Tea Party factor is not as big in California. There was some talk of the Tea Parties causing a last minute surge of support for Republican Chuck Devore in the California Senate primary, but it was unclear that he was more of a small-government candidate than the winner, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. And to my knowledge, the Tea Parties weren't a factor either in former EBay CEO Meg Whitman's victory in the Republican primary for governor. And besides, I think most Tea Partiers have the sense to hold different standards for what they expect from left-leaning "blue states" like Massachusetts, California, and Illinois. We know that Scott Brown will be a wishy-washy moderate, but he will be a lot better than Ted Kennedy. Same for Fiorina versus Barbara Boxer.

Finally, the results in Virginia are perhaps least promising for the Tea Party movement. In Virginia's second district, the nomination was won by establishment-backed candidate Scott Rigell. But my memory from the second district candidates' forum that I moderated (see my comments here) is that he was not the best of the candidates, but he did not conspicuously stand out as a wish-washy moderate.

The worst news is from Virginia's fifth district, where the establishment candidate won, despite his 2004 vote in favor of a big state tax hike, and despite initially snubbing the Tea Party movement. It's very clear that in VA-5, the Tea Party vote was hopelessly split. It's not just that Hurt won with less than half the vote (48%), and without carrying many of the counties outside of his base of support in the Southern end of the district—all of which implies that there were enough anti-establishment votes to defeat him, if they had all gone to one candidate. Add to that the fact that, if the Tea Parties had settled on a single challenger to Hurt, the challenger would have gotten much more publicity and much more money, and he might have done even better. Now Hurt will face another challenge from an independent candidate who claims Tea Party backing—potentially splitting the right's vote and getting the Demcractic incumbent re-elected in November.

There are some more subtle and hopeful trends to be noticed from the election results. In Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln won the Democratic primary for the race to keep her Senate seat. Why is that good news? Because she defeated a challenge from her Party's left wing, a candidate supported by Daily Kos and the other leftist "nutroots," and by $10 million from the labor unions. Now even sources in the White House are complaining that "organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet." Given the style of expression, that's probably Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

And as Michael Barone points out, even when incumbents and establishment candidates won, they did so by much lower margins than they are used to. For example, Senator Lincoln won 83% of the vote in her last primary, but only 52% in this one.

I am put in mind of the story of the Teamsters Union business agent who was confined to the hospital. A bouquet was sent, with a note reading: “The Executive Board wishes you a speedy recovery, by a vote of nine to six.” Such was the voters’ verdict on incumbents on June 8.

Barone also points out that Republican turnout in the primaries is way above normal, a key indicator of greater enthusiasm on the right in this election year.

Now let us sum up the big lessons for the Tea Party movement—and some of the reforms we may need to institute to increase the ability of insurgent and grassroots candidates to overcome the resistance of the establishment.

The easiest solution I see is to push for a runoff system in each congressional district: if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, there will be a new primary in which the top two vote-getters face off against one another. That would eliminate messes like we had in VA-5, where 52% of Republicans voted for someone other than the establishment candidate, but their votes were split among six candidates.

This reform has the virtue of being simple, of already being widely used (Nikki Haley will face a run-off in the South Carolina governor's primary, if her opponent doesn't withdraw), and of having a strong rationale: the party has an interest in making sure its nominee can command the support of more than half of the party's base.

The second lesson is the importance of leadership. Notice the big difference made in these races by endorsements from figures with a wide audience and some influence in the Tea Party movement. The most influential endorser (at least in this round) turned out to be Sarah Palin. She influences the Tea Party vote in a somewhat odd and indirect way: she is less of a spokesman for small government than a spokesman for conservative cultural populism—which is a significant component of the Tea Party movement.

But it isn't just national figures who make a difference. Local leaders can make a difference—both by what they do, and by what they don't do. Here in VA-5, the key factor was the inaction of former Representative Virgil Goode, a figure so widely liked and respected that many of the Tea Party candidates said that if he had chosen to run again for his old office, they would have dropped out of the race. If anyone could have unified the Tea Party vote around a single candidate, it would have been Virgil Goode. In fact, the Tea Party candidate who performed best, Mike McKelvey, did so in part because his campaign sent out automated phone messages in the last day of the race quoting a positive statement that Goode made about McKelvey—an attempt to imply an endorsement. But Goode played Hamlet through the whole campaign and never backed a candidate. (By contrast, it took him about five minutes after the vote to endorse the winner, establishment candidate Robert Hurt. That ought to cause a few people out here to question Goode's actual anti-establishment credentials.)

The strength of the Tea Party movement is that it is a true grass-roots movement, organized from the bottom up. The weakness is that it therefore lacks a strong organization and frequently strong leaders. The establishment knows how to coalesce early on around its candidate. But the Tea Party grassroots don't, because they reject the whole idea of having someone who gives order from the top down.

But these primaries were a lesson in the importance of building an organization. In VA-5, McKelvey made the best showing—getting more than a third of the vote—because he had the most professional organization (backed by the most money), including an honest-to-goodness campaign bus that he used to spend months touring small towns throughout the district.

I was happy to see that my favorite, Mike McPadden, at least came in a solid third, while most of the other candidates flatlined at one or two percent. But I also noticed a strong local effect. Pundits have been noting that Virginia's fifth district is geographically bigger than New Jersey (but with a fraction of the population). Since I live in the area, I have the advantage of being able to read the county-by-county results and have some idea of what they mean. The pattern is that Mike McPadden won Nelson County, where he lives; Ken Boyd won in Albemarle County, where he sits on the Board of Supervisors; McKelvey did best in the areas around Lynchburg, where he lives; and Feda Morton won in her home base of Fluvanna County. The winner, Robert Hurt, did not win any of the counties in the north end of the fifth district—but he dominated with 80% of the vote in his stronghold in Southside Virginia, where he has a pre-existing campaign organization from his years as a state senator. In short, each candidate did best where he is best known and where it is easiest for him to create and maintain an organization.

And that leads to biggest lesson from Tuesday's primaries, the one that is going to be most difficult to respond to. What we learned is that the Tea Parties may enjoy support from a large number of people. But the Tea Parties are a sympathy more than a movement, and a movement more than an organization. They had a decisive impact where—largely due to fortuitous circumstances—they were able to clearly coalesce around a single candidate. But they have no centralized structure and little ability to coordinate their actions, even on the congressional district level.

In a way, this is a good thing about the Tea Parties—that their members and organizers are not lifelong political operatives who have spent years obsessing over the mechanics and manipulation of the political process. And we have good reason to be concerned that if the Tea Parties did create more of a formal, centralized organization, if they became more immersed in political tactics, they would quickly become just another establishment, taken over by the same kind of pragmatists and careerists who tend to take over any going concern, irrespective of ideology.

And yet some form of organization is needed to give the Tea Party movement more impact. And that leads to my most complicated and radical suggestion. In races like VA-5, where the Tea Party vote is divided among multiple candidates, the Tea Parties should insist on holding some kind of district-wide convention to choose a single nominee, pledging all of the Tea Party candidates to abide by the convention's decision and get behind the winner. Then the Tea Parties should follow this up with as much real campaign support as they can muster, including a Tea Party "get out the vote" effort.

This is a radical suggestion—in essence, an attempt to create an ad hoc shadow political party within the Republican Party. But we should all be concerned that the energy of this year will be lost, that we will miss this chance to move the Republican Party in a more principled pro-liberty direction. The Republican Establishment seems to be making the same political calculation as the Democrats: that the Tea Party momentum will fade, so if they just ride out this storm, they will still find themsolves in charge two or four or six years from now.

And while in this year, the Tea Parties have found themselves with too many candidates in some cases, in a few years we may even have to work at recruiting good candidates, since there will be fewer open seats to grab and people with political ambitious won't have the same sense that anything is possible.

The big lesson for the Tea Parties is how difficult it is to change the ideological direction of American politics, how much effort and organization it requires, and how long-term the effort has to be.

The Tea Parties need to engage in an ideological campaign to keep people motivated on the core issues—but they also need to educate themselves on political activism and be willing to experiment with new ideas like district-wide conventions, if we are going to give the Tea Parties a more effective voice in the political process.