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Well you know I'm very supportive of what the Tea Party is trying to do. They're very concerned with spending, the deficit, the bailouts, you know all of those kinds of things. But I really think that the strength of the Tea Party is being a grassroots movement.

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 there is a real misunderstanding about what the Tea Party movement is. The Tea Party movement is a sentiment in America that government is broken - both parties are to blame - and if we don't do something soon, this exceptional country will be lost, and it will become just like everybody else.

You know, the Tea Party is a - first of all, it is a significant movement, and I think the media and some pundits have tried to write it off as a bunch of cranks or something. But, in fact, it's really a very legitimate and fairly significant swath of voters out there.

The Tea Party movement itself is maybe 15, 20 percent of the electorate. It's relatively affluent, white, nativist. You know, it has rather traditional nativist streaks to it. But what is much more important, I think, is the - is its outrage.

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.

The Tea Party has very close affinities with independent third-party movements like the George Wallace movement. The Tea Party is still inchoate, still trying to figure out what it's going to become.

I think what the Tea Party movement is - I'm all for it; they're out there fighting for our rights, fighting for what our forefathers stood for.

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.