Sometime between April 2010 and October 2010, the Tea Party here in central N.C. underwent a drastic change. It went from being merely an expression of unfocused rage to being capable of focusing on one issue - and showed that - as of just before the 2010 elections that it won for the “conventional” Republican Party, both here in N.C. and nationally.
While its April 2010 rally in Greensboro was the as-usual unfocused rage - complete with a man with a memorable lengthy stream-of-consciousness rant on a sign taller than he was - the October 2010 rally focused on a pending sales-tax-hike referendum locally two weeks later. That was clear from a first-ever large banner up front (photo below) - again, a first ever for the movement.
The movement’s change would become increasingly clear in the first months after the newly-elected-in-2010 state legislators took office in Raleigh - but that October rally, predating that election by a couple weeks, was the first sign that the Tea Party now was an actual political party-within-a-party.

This sign at an Oct. 14, 2010 Tea Party rally in Greensboro, N.C. clearly shows the movement by then is capable of a unified focus on one or more issues and politicians.