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So, a lot of my supporters back home are members of the Tea Party.

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

I'm cynical by nature, but I am also very hopeful because I see people from the Left and the Right showing up to these tea parties. You have people, bikers, union members and guys in three-piece suits showing up to these things.

In America today, unfortunately, the right wing has been totally commandeered by the Tea Party, and it's a bad thing for our party.

So I'm a pretty conservative fellow, but not conservative enough for the Tea Party.

The Tea Party doesn't like politicians.

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.

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 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.

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?