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I don't think the Tea Party people are racist, except maybe a tiny portion of them. But there has been a deliberate effort - again, referring to Fox Broadcasting - to inject the race issue into it. They have actually called Obama a racist on television.

There are good people and bad people in all organizations fundamentally however, when you look at the basis of the Tea Party it has nothing to do with race. It has to do with an economic recovery. It has to do with limiting the role of our government in our lives. It has to do with free markets.

I understand Tea Partyers' anger with the system, but they are in way over their heads and often racially motivated, and I can't be part of that.

Liberals have difficulty understanding the Tea Party because they think it is a bunch of selfish racists. But I think the Tea Party is driven in large part by concerns about fairness.

I think that, you know, when we start talking about the Tea Party, people want to marginalize that into some kind of organization or party, but it really isn't.

I think people are confused about what the Tea Party is. I mean, they were a broad cross-section of Americans who came together concerned about our debt and our spending. And they're interested in constitutional, limited government. And so they're not one group of people. They're thousands of small groups all over the country.

The Tea Party is almost solely grassroots-based; business interests have almost no grassroots organization. The Republican Party has for too long been run on behalf of business interests who favor candidates the grassroots hate; the minute that those candidates begin to flag, only loyal Tea Partiers stand behind them.

At root, the Tea Party is nothing more than a them-versus-us thing.

A lot of Republicans are white Christians, but the Republican Party is reaching out to Hispanics, and reaching out to blacks, and reaching out to Asians.