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What kind of tea party should Republicans hold to get back into power? A rebellious tea-dumping bash or a dainty affair with crumpets and impeccable manners?

Should Republicans stoke the populist flames of their base or reach out more broadly, with a softer touch, to moderates and independents?

In the short term (i.e., the 2010 midterm), they don't have to choose. If they play their cards right, Republicans can attract populists and moderates as they did in 1994, when they toppled entrenched Democratic majorities. But to reclaim power for the long term, the GOP will have to serve more crumpets and less rebellion.

In its near-term favor is the strong tendency of midterm elections to go against the president's party. From the 1840s until 1998, the president's party increased its majority in the House in only one midterm election, 1934, when FDR's earth-shattering 1932 win still reverberated and Republicans were in disarray. In 1998 and 2002, the pattern was broken, but only slightly. Democrats gained a few House seats in 1998, because of the impeachment backlash and the large Democratic losses of 1994. Republicans gained five House seats in 2002, in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and President George W. Bush's job approval rating jumped to nearly 70 percent around the midterm elections.

Despite these counterexamples, based on the majority of midterm elections over the past 80 years, the most likely outcome is for Republicans to gain some House seats in 2010.

The 1994 result is the one that present-day Republicans would most like to emulate. That year, a perfect storm of factors coalesced and the GOP took over more than 50 House seats and a majority it had not held in more than 40 years. Larger forces such as President Bill Clinton's low approval ratings, a slow economy and congressional scandals set the tone. But much of the credit for the victory goes to Newt Gingrich and his allies for both appealing to populist discontent and reaching out to moderates unhappy with Clinton's performance.

Take the Contract With America, a populist document with tenets such as a balanced-budget amendment and term limits. But the set of issues was polled and focus-group-tested to appeal to supermajorities of Americans. Republicans picked up seats in a batch of swing states--six in Washington state, four in Ohio, three in California, two in Illinois and New Jersey, and individual districts in Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

A coalition of populism and moderation worked in 1994 because winning midterms is about an effective opposition, not an effective governing strategy. Diverse groups join together with multiple grievances against the governing party.

In 2010, Republicans can blend voters who are most libertarian and suspicious about the role of government with moderate voters worried about overreach and future large deficits. If things go badly for the Obama administration, Republicans could gain a substantial number of seats.

But a longer-term strategy for a governing majority will involve more compromises in party ideology and reaching out to non-Republican groups. For this outreach, throwing tea overboard will not craft a majority but may well scare off all but the true believers.

British conservatives spent years in the wilderness as Tony Blair and New Labor grabbed the center of British politics and conservatives did not change. Only in recent years, when David Cameron took the reins of the party and moved it more to the center, have conservatives become viable and even likely to win the next election. As the London Times' Danny Finkelstein, a supporter of Cameronism, saw it, Tories had gone from being the competent and nasty party to the incompetent and nasty party. But even at the party's nadir, true believers saw no value in moderation. The answer, according to Finkelstein and Cameron, was for Tories to become more tolerant, more optimistic and more centrist.

The Republican Party is not in as dire straits as British conservatives were from 1997 to 2005, but it is losing younger, more-educated voters as well as growing Hispanic and Asian immigrant groups. Its base is shrinking, and it needs to reach out. Compared with the Democratic Party, it will still be more socially conservative, more skeptical about the role of government in the economy and more willing to maintain and use military force.

But in each of these areas, Republicans will need to move to the middle, emphasizing deficit reduction and modesty in government, not tax cuts, and taking the edge off some social issues, showing greater tolerance for gays and more caution in deploying troops.

Prominent conservatives such as Wall Street Journal columnist Kim Strassel have already inveighed against a mushy Cameronism. But her no-compromises Republican Party will remain in the minority, short of a monumental Democratic slip-up.

So pass the sugar, read Miss Manners and mind your p's and q's, or else the Republican Party will remain at sea, adrift with the tea that has been thrown overboard.

John C. Fortier is a research fellow at AEI.