Quotes About Tea Partiers

Tea Partiers hate government more than they hate the national debt. They refuse to reduce that debt with tax increases, even with tax increases on the wealthy, because a tax increase doesn't reduce the size of government.

Two years ago, when leaders in neighboring Mathews County broached the subject of sea-level rise, Tea Partiers packed meetings, warning of an environmentalist plot to "put nature above man." They linked a proposal to build dikes to a United Nations sustainability plan known as Agenda 21, which has inspired a number of conspiracy theories among far-right activists.

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.

It would be inaccurate to say the Tea Partiers are racists. What they are, in truth, are narcissists.

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.

Even on this topic, though, there was some disagreement, as Tea Partiers split over whether the president was a communist, a Nazi, or both.)

The Tea Partiers don't want all regulations eliminated. They just want laws that can be understood and regulations that aren't going to destroy businesses, or leave deserving veterans without a source for a mortgage loan.

The tea partiers are a great addition. The tea partiers have invigorated a base that has been dormant for a long period of time. We're going to have a broad array of different views in our Republican conference, and I think it might be more interesting than any I've been in in a long time.