Conservative groups — including the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-S.C.) Senate Conservatives Fund — are pivoting toward Texas’s Senate race after their embarrassing defeat in Nebraska’s Senate primary.

The Tea Party-linked groups were riding high after helping to beat Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) in his primary 10 days ago. But they hit a low this week when their preferred candidate in Nebraska’s Senate primary finished a distant third after they combined to spend $2.5 million on the race.

Now Texas looms large as a chance for redemption — and for the groups to show that Indiana was not a fluke.

Texas, Utah, Arizona and Wisconsin remain the big Senate races that at least some of the groups are targeting; all three of them are involved in Texas. 

The groups will receive a lot of credit if they can help former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz (R) make the runoff election against Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R) — but if Dewhurst wins the primary on the first round with 50 percent of the vote, Washington Republicans will take the groups less seriously.

“There’s a lot for them to play for within the party in these next couple of races,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell. “Their sole goal is to hold Republicans’ feet to the fire, and if they can’t do that in these races, they have a problem.”

Read more from Cameron Joseph at The Hill

The New York Times is only four months late to this story - Nick Carey at Reuters was way ahead of the game. Jennifer Steinhauser and Jonathan Weisman of The New York Times report:

In Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska and Texas, Republican Senate candidates are vying for the mantle of Tea Party outsider. A number of them say that they would seek to press an agenda that is generally to the right of the minority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and that they would demand a deeper policy role for the Senate’s growing circle of staunch conservatives.

Some say they have not decided whether they would support Mr. McConnell, who could find himself contending with the type of fractious rank and file that has vexed the House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio.

Mr. McConnell has already made adjustments. He recently enlisted Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a freshman elected with Tea Party backing, to lead efforts to coordinate the Republican messages and agenda in the Senate and the House with the party’s presidential nominee. A spokesman for Mr. McConnell, Don Stewart, said Mr. McConnell was exploring joining Mr. Mourdock on the campaign trail.

But pressure remains. Several Republican freshmen in the Senate — among them Mr. Paul, Mr. Johnson, Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida — under the tutelage of the Tea Party kingmaker Jim DeMint of South Carolina, have laid the groundwork for a more conservative path in the Senate, often throwing their own logs on the fire of gridlock that has seized Congress.

Mourdock’s landslide win was a minor victory for the tea party, because Lugar was his own worst enemy and the job is far from complete.

It is not enough for the tea party to just primary incumbents; you have to deliver general election results. If Mourdock is victorious in November, in what is expected to be a tightly contested general election matchup with Donnelly, then last night’s result will likely be considered a watershed moment for the tea party in 2012.

Read more from Ford O'Connell at Politico's "The Arena"

Senator Richard Lugar, a 35-year Senate veteran and leading foreign policy voice, was soundly defeated in the Indiana Republican primary by a Tea Party-backed rival on Tuesday, jolting the American political establishment during a volatile election year.

Lugar, 80, was the first Senate incumbent ousted this year and his defeat showed that the anti-Washington, small government Tea Party movement is alive and well.

The veteran Senator lost to Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock by more than 20 percentage points, according to preliminary results from the state election division.

"Lugar's defeat is a wake-up call from the Tea Party to the Republican establishment," said Ford O'Connell, a Republican strategist and chairman of CivicForum PAC, which endorsed Mourdock and contributed to his campaign. "It will make them think about how to proceed, not just in what they say but how they vote in the run-up to the (November) election."

Read more from Nick Carey and Eric Johnson at Reuters

This is a positive sign for the Tea Party, who many pundits have written off, but the job will not be complete until Mourdock wins in November. The Indianapolis Star's Mary Beth Schnider has more on Tea Party challenger Richard Mourdock's decisive victory: 

Sen. Richard Lugar’s 36-year Senate career is now history.

Lugar was defeated in today’s Republican primary election by Treasurer Richard Mourdock, ending his bid for a seventh term in the U.S. Senate. 

It wasn’t even close. 

With 70 percent of the vote counted, Mourdock had 60 percent to Lugar’s 40 percent.

Mourdock will face Democrat U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly and Libertarian Andy Horning in the November election.

Very solid analysis. From NBC's First Read:

(1) Residency and outreach: Lugar hasn’t lived in Indiana for years and wasn’t able to say what address was on his driver’s license. Mourdock exploited it. And Lugar didn’t do enough outreach with local GOP establishment or Tea Party leaders. Lugar disputes that, telling NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell: “I've been perfectly connected all the way along. It’s a ridiculous charge. How can anybody be more Hoosier? I've got a farm out here that I continue to work with my sons. I manage it on behalf of our family. I'm in touch every week with everybody in the state, usually on the ground with visits but with our staffs, trying to meet almost every challenge of individual Hoosiers or groups.”

(2) Ignoring the recent past: Last year, Republicans walked Lugar through what went wrong with Bennett, Lisa Murkowski, and Mike Castle. And what went right with John McCain -- no favorite of the Tea Party – who went after opponent J.D. Hayworth early on and never let up. Unfortunately for Lugar, strategists say, the advice was ignored. If you don’t want to change your own stances, then make the alternative unacceptable. McCain made his alternative unacceptable.

(3) Campaign: he didn’t have the kind of campaign in place that was necessary to win this kind of race. Hatch and even Olympia Snowe got it, and hired top operatives. Mourdock hired people who’d been there before;

(4) Message: “Lugar as statesman” just wasn’t going to get the job done. Movements have short-term memories. Mourdock’s message was simple and effective– “Dick Lugar is a fine man, but 36 years in Washington is long enough, and he’s lost touch with Indiana.”;

(5) Candidate: So much of what happens in campaigns, comes from the top. As revered as Lugar is in Washington, he wasn’t able to adapt -- and failed to fully appreciate -- a changing dynamic within his party. Yesterday, for example, he continued to defend earmarks.  

When Newt Gingrich's campaign finally died last Wednesday, it took with it the hopes of Tea Party and other conservative groups to lift one of their own into the White House.

But it did not end their interest and involvement in the 2012 election cycle. It only shifted it.

[T]he Tea Party faces its own moment of truth this cycle. Its boisterous, headline-grabbing rallies are a thing of the past. Its poll numbers have slipped from a commanding high to even or worse. Those extremely opposed outnumber those extremely supportive of its agenda by big and growing numbers. Moreover, Republican leadership in the House openly defies its wishes, and Democrats have begun to think they can use Tea Party affiliation against their opponents.

[U]nless the Tea Party can deliver this cycle, unless it can push favored candidates to victory and be seen as having played key roles in those victories, its future may be limited indeed.

That's what makes this Tuesday so important. That's the day Indiana voters will go to the polls to choose between six-term U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar and his Republican primary opponent, state treasurer Richard Mourdock.

Fortunately for the Tea Party, it has picked a good place to make its stand. Lugar positions himself as a statesman willing to work across party lines at a time when sharp elbows and partisanship carry the day. He has angered conservatives with his votes for Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. He has an F rating from the National Rifle Association, a tepid 75from the American Conservative Union, and a 73—two points below the disappointing Republican average—in the more economically focused Heritage Action for America ratings.

Read more from Ford O'Connell at U.S. News & World Report

From CNN's Janet Digiacomo:

Ask different tea party volunteers in the days before Super Tuesday who the leading presidential candidate is and you will get different answers.

Rick Santorum has a lot of support in our unscientific polls, said Mark West of the Chattanooga, Tennessee, Tea Party.

Ron Paul is closest to our core values, said Michael Wilson of the Cincinnati, Ohio, chapter

We liked Michele Bachmann, said National Tea Party Coalition co-founder Michael Patrick Leahy.

The difference of opinion only proves what tea party volunteers say about the movement as a whole: Its followers are diverse in terms of conservative values and their own beliefs, which according to the various chapter leaders explains why no candidate is separating himself from the pack for the movement's support.

Republican strategist Ford O'Connell says presidental hopeful Mitt Romney will need to give Tea Party conservatives a solid reason to vote for him

http://www.ksdk.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=1427677648001

As Mitt Romney inches toward the Republican Party's presidential nomination, many conservative activists are increasingly focused on a different political prize for 2012: the Senate.

Republicans, who currently have 47 of the 100 Senate seats, are seen as having a good shot of winning control of the upper chamber because they are defending far fewer seats in the November election.

Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, is the clear frontrunner for the party's presidential nomination after victories in the Iowa and New Hampshire nominating contests this month. He can move a big step closer with a win in the January 19 South Carolina primary.

But some supporters of the Tea Party movement and other conservatives distrust Romney, deriding him as a moderate, and they hope to get a few of their candidates into the Senate to serve as a "bulwark" against him or President Barack Obama.

Republicans would need to win four Democratic-controlled seats and successfully defend all their seats to win the Senate. A net gain of three seats would give Republicans control if Romney or another Republican won the White House, as the sitting vice president breaks all tie votes in the Senate.

While Republicans are expected to lose some seats in the House of Representatives, they currently are expected to retain their majority. If the party gains the Senate then even a few conservative senators could have an outsized impact on the 100-member chamber and U.S. politics.

"The Senate gives conservatives their greatest opportunity to have an impact in 2012," said Republican strategist and CivicForumPAC chairman Ford O'Connell. "And the Senate is doubly important because no one should underestimate President Obama, he's the best campaigner I've ever seen."

"Once the Republican presidential nomination process is over," he added, "the real story is going to be the Senate."

Read more from Nick Carey at Reuters