The tea party’s fortunes are falling after it hit its high point in 2010, now giving traditional Republicans the chance to take control of their own party.

Back then, the GOP, benefitting from a tea party surge, regained control of the U.S. House of Representatives and won governor’s chairs and other state races.

The tea party is not a political party at all, but a group of insurgents who want to take over the Republican Party. Many of them seem to believe that the country is on the verge of becoming a socialist dictatorship.

Tea party gains were based largely on the sluggish recovery from the recession and the belief that, even if the Democrats were not responsible for it, they had failed to take action to reverse it.

And what action do tea partiers advocate? Government spending should be cut, accompanied by a tax reduction that would leave more money in consumers’ hands. Their spending would fuel economic recovery.

Cutting government spending would mean that you were cutting government itself, their underlying objective.

The traditional Republican Party — pro-business, free market, limited government — was directly challenged by the tea party and its supporters, and it began losing ground.

In fact, moderate or traditional Republicans have come to look like a dying breed.

In 1981, the six states of New England counted 12 Republicans in Congress, all moderates – five senators and seven House members.

Now, New England has only two Republican senators, Maine moderate Susan Collins and the 2010 New Hampshire conservative winner, Kelly Ayotte.

The initial reaction of the traditional GOP appears to have been stunned acquiescence. Party stalwarts, who had assumed they had the respect of their party, found themselves out-organized by the tea partiers to the point they lost control.

You do not have to look further than the Maine Republican Party to see the moderates pushed aside by conservative activists at the 2010 and 2012 state conventions.

But the 2012 elections began to show that voters may not subscribe to the GOP under the control of the tea party. Strongly conservative Republicans began to lose to moderate Democrats, and others had close calls.

In Maine, the Democrats recaptured the Legislature. And the minority GOP began to cooperate.

Gov. Paul LePage, supported by tea partiers, won in 2010 in a three-way race, but gained only 39 percent of the vote. After two years in office, he has not gained in popularity.

Undaunted, he is expected to run again next year. In another three-way race, with Eliot Cutler again running as a strong independent, he could well be reelected as a minority governor.

Some think the most important goal of the 2014 election is to toss LePage out. When a highly partisan governor fails to lead, they believe voters may be ready for almost any alternative.

Political observers suggest that the Democrats, whose candidate ran a poor third last time, should not field a candidate and let Cutler win.

That misses the point. There’s no need to weaken one of the major political parties when the solution is to strengthen the other party.

The answer for those who do not want a second LePage term is for traditional Republicans to organize like the tea party and come up with a single, strong candidate to face him in the party primary.

Maine voters would be better served by a governor’s race with three strong candidates, all of whom are committed to a constructive and cooperative approach to state government.

It’s clear that the GOP is ready for renewal.

In the recent vote on the state’s supplemental budget, the Legislature overwhelmingly supported a bipartisan formula. But LePage, angry that legislators had not accepted his proposals, opposed it and refused to sign the budget, allowing it to go into effect without his signature.

Not one Republican member of the Maine Senate or House voted in support of LePage.

With a big gap between the governor and his party, the Republicans could now look for a new standard-bearer.

In other words, the big problem is not that a Democrat and Cutler would split the anti-Le- Page vote, but that LePage would get a free pass onto the ballot simply because he is the incumbent.

The lesson for Maine Republicans should be the same for the GOP across the country. The party can offer an alternative to the Democrats, provided it is not extremist.

The purely negative vision of the tea party is slipping, and it is time for Republicans, in Maine and across the country, to take back their party.

GORDON L. WEIL, of Harpswell, is an author, publisher, consultant and former public official.