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The Tea Party emerged from a laudably grassroots base: libertarians, fervent Constitutionalists, and ordinary people alarmed at the suppression of liberties, whether by George W. Bush or Barack Obama.

Is Romney a tea party candidate? I'd probably say that he's the least of the candidates running for president right now that would be considered a tea party candidate.

The Tea Party is a group that rejects deep thinking, it rejects the very complex analysis that is involved in public policy, it rejects the kind of textured decision-making that Ronald Reagan prided himself on.

It was widespread that the politics of Tea Party people would be foreign to Ronald Reagan and they would be seen by him as frivolous and uninformed.

The Tea Party is an organic, spontaneous movement that rose up in opposition to to the Pelosi-Reid-Obama agenda.

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.

I've been an Obama supporter since he announced he was campaigning. I was aware of him as a senator, but I wasn't as engaged as I probably should've been.

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.

As a candidate, Obama projected himself as a new Reagan, above narrow party politics. He wanted to please all but has ended up annoying many.

I actually never thought that Barack Obama was anything but a typical Democratic party politician, which to me meant that he was probably in bed with Wall Street.