Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is pushing immigration reform, and some in the tea party aren't happy about it.

Several dozen tea party members demonstrated outside some of Rubio's Florida offices on Tuesday to protest the comprehensive immigration bill that Rubio and seven Senate colleagues announced this week, which includes a path to citizenship for up to 11 million immigrants in the country illegally.

For Republicans pondering their future as a party, they got a good look at the two main paths during the Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday.

Down one path is Marco Rubio -- the conservative-but-not-too-conservative Florida senator who came up as a tea party favorite but has morphed into the establishment's preferred 2016 candidate (assuming Jeb Bush does't run) and who is flexing his leadership muscles by trying to broker compromise on the hot-button issue of immigration.

The Republican Party's most prominent voices, including potential presidential candidates, joined thousands of conservatives and Tea Party activists outside Washington to discuss the future of the party after it was dealt a presidential election loss in November. 

Republicans are a party divided at the moment. There is an establishment wing of the party and, for lack of a better descriptor, a tea party wing of the party. While the two sides often get along, there are clear differences in tone and approach when it comes to issues like gay marriage and immigration among others.

Since the day they were swept to power more than two years ago, the tea party's legions in Washington have made dramatic federal spending cuts the centerpiece of an economic message that has dominated the national debate.

Republicans are treading carefully around Tea Party groups as they pursue a Senate majority that slipped through their fingers in 2010 and 2012.

Taxpayer dollars were used to fund a study that painted the Tea Party movement as the spawn of the tobacco lobby -- a premise that Tea Party leaders say is absurd. 

In delivering a tea party response to the State of the Union, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) suggested that President Obama has won over lower-income voters with "free stuff," an echo of Mitt Romney's comments on the 47 percent and "gifts" to key demographics.

In his tea party response to President Obama's State of the Union tonight, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) will call on Republicans to embrace immigrants.

"We are the party that embraces hard work and ingenuity, therefore we must be the party that embraces the immigrant who wants to come to America for a better future," the senator will say. "We must be the party who sees immigrants as assets, not liabilities. We must be the party that says, ‘If you want to work, if you want to become an American, we welcome you.'"

Senator Rand Paul presented these remarks as the Tea Party Response to President Obama's State of the Union address on February 12, 2013. Senator Marco Rubio presented the Republican response.