Quote

The problem with the Tea Party is that it's been used in a way that scares people into supporting an agenda that's counter to their own interests.

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

The Tea Party movement as I perceive it is all about recognizing the difference between state and federal powers. And that there are limits to federal power that need to be respected.

I think that's what activates the Tea Party Movement. What they see is the government interfering with their lives and with the inheritance of their children. Are we going to pass down liberty or deficits? And that's really what this movement is about.

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.

Whether it's their Sharia law and birther conspiracies or their unwillingness to buck Grover Norquist's no-tax pledge, the Tea Partiers have hijacked their party and carried it all the way to the right.

The Tea Party represents stakeholders in the American system; people who were never involved in politics or thought they had to be, yet realized that political corruption and incompetence threatened not only their families, but the future of the nation itself.

When you have a political environment that is being so heavily influenced by the Tea Party that calls for shrinking the size of government, you can't ignore it. There are political realities.

The Tea Party is simply a loose description of local activism driven by Americans who want smaller government and more self-reliance. That sounds like what the Founding Fathers had in mind, does it not?

I think it's clear to me that what - when I look at the tea party, it's about one-third Democrat, one-third Republican, one-third independents. But 100 percent of them are sure that the agenda that is taking place in Washington, D.C., is about extremism and is about bankrupting this country and every state within this country.