pip giving "ImportError: No module named setuptools" but I can import setuptools in python interpreter

Question

I'm getting setup on a new mac and I was humming along just fine, installing pip and a few packages. When suddenly, every pip command I'd try to run would throw

Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/pip-1.2.1-py2.6.egg/pip/basecommand.py", line 107, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "/Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/pip-1.2.1-py2.6.egg/pip/commands/install.py", line 248, in run
    import setuptools
ImportError: No module named setuptools

I figured I had accidentally deleted a directory or something, so I tried reinstalling setuptools, following the advice of other answers on this site. I downloaded the setuptools egg from here and ran it like a shell script. Got this output:

Processing setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg
Removing /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg
Copying setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg to /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages
setuptools 0.6c11 is already the active version in easy-install.pth
Installing easy_install script to /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin
Installing easy_install-2.7 script to /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin

Installed /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg
Processing dependencies for setuptools==0.6c11
Finished processing dependencies for setuptools==0.6c11

Now, if I start an interactive python session, I can import setuptools without error, but pip (and other command line scripts) complain that it's not installed. Any ideas why Python seems to be finding it, but not other scripts?

If it helps, this is what's in sys.path:

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python27.zip
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/plat-darwin
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/plat-mac
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/plat-mac/lib-scriptpackages
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/lib-tk
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/lib-old
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages

Answer 1

Your pip doesn't seem to be in agreement with your Python. Compare:

File "/Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/pip-1.2.1-py2.6.egg/pip/basecommand.py", line 107, in main

to

Installed /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg

If python2.7 has setuptools, then you should have

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/easy_install-2.7

available, in which case

easy_install-2.7 pip

should give you pip-2.7.