Quotes About The Tea Party

#1. 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.

Eugene Jarecki

#2. First of all, do I think there's some racists in the Tea Party? Yeah. I'm an ordained United Methodist pastor; there's some racists in the Methodist church. I don't know if there's a body that does not have some racists in it.

Emanuel Cleaver

#3. Even labeling the tea party and left and right its dangerous, because it's - it's another ego separation tool.

Doreen Virtue

#4. All previous populist movements were demanding things from governments, whereas the Tea Party is saying, 'Give us less, go away.' That's heartening to see.

P. J. O'Rourke

#5. The Tea Party movement is a wide and diverse group. It will hurt the Republican Party if some elements of the Tea Party decide to become third party advocates because it will split the conservative vote.

Karl Rove

#6. The Tea Party knows that continuing to delay charting a course to spending reform hurts everybody.

Bob Barr

#7. The Tea Party elites gained extraordinary influence by being able to funnel millions of undisclosed dollars into campaigns with ads that distort the truth and attack government.

Chuck Schumer

#8. Internet companies created the social-media tools that fueled the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street insurgencies, and that have helped political candidates rally grass-roots support.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#9. The NAACP believes the Tea Party is racist. The Tea Party believes the NAACP is racist.

Jim Webb

#10. The Tea Party elites believe government is evil. Everything about government is bad, and they blame all problems, even non-economic problems, problems that were caused by the private sector, on government.

Chuck Schumer

#11. When the Tea Party comes to town, compromise goes out the door.

Claire McCaskill

#12. And my principles go right in line with the Tea Party.

Renee Ellmers

#13. The Tea Party did not run me out. If you know me and my personality, I would welcome the challenge.

Bart Stupak

#14. Part of why the Tea Party so deeply threatened the elite media is the tea party looked around and suddenly realized, there are more of us than there are of them.

Newt Gingrich

#15. I don't think 'my way or the highway' works, that mentality. And that's what the Tea Party has done: drawn a line in the sand. I'm sorry - that doesn't work in business, that doesn't work in your family, it certainly doesn't work in government and our Congress.

Patrick Murphy

#16. The Tea Party was born out of the disgust many Americans felt early in the financial crisis upon learning that the federal government was even contemplating reducing the principal on some troubled mortgages.

Mark Zandi

#17. The tax issue is the most powerful issue in American politics going back to the Tea Party.

Grover Norquist

#18. My presence in the social media and on the Internet is much bigger than many of the other candidates, including Mitt Romney. So, when you take the social media and you take the Tea Party citizens movement, you have a combination there that, quite frankly, 10 years ago, I wouldn't have had a chance.

Herman Cain

#19. Sometimes people credit me for the Tea Party. It's actually the other way around.

Jim DeMint

#20. I sometimes throw in a couple of swears just to keep the Christian right off my tail. I wouldn't want to be the tea party's go-to comedian.

Gary Gulman

#21. Unfortunately, the Republican leadership in the House right now seems to have been strangled by the tea party.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz

#22. I think the Tea Party has brought important issues to the table.

Roy Blunt

#23. I think everyday people on the street who have never been affiliated with the tea party movement are alarmed with the spending and the debt that we have.

Kristi Noem

#24. I think it's interesting that people like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi said that the Tea Party was dead and they weren't influential and yet they're still talking about the Tea Party.

Katie Pavlich

#25. The Tea Party doesn't like politicians.

Jim DeMint

#26. I'm a bad, inconsistent person, but at least I'm not a member of the Tea Party griping incoherently about too much government, but flashing my Medicare card every other day to a doctor because I'm 400 pounds overweight.

George Singleton

#27. The modern day anarchists known as the Tea Party, they believe in no government.

Harry Reid

#28. His track record of pragmatism, depth and candor all speak to a person who would find the Tea Party simplistic, opportunistic and misguided. Reagan was surrounded by some very smart people who gave him very sound advice. They were not wondering where certain countries are on the map.

Eugene Jarecki

#29. It's why we oppose Citizens United from that right-wing Supreme Court. In 2012, I also said the Tea Party "acted like terrorists" and called a donut shop manager in Milwaukee who wanted lower taxes a "smartass." And I said the number one issue is a three-letter word, J-O-B-S." I'm proud of who I am.

Joe Biden

#30. Marco Rubio is interesting because he checks so many boxes when you think about what a Republican nominee needs. He brings Florida, he's young, he's Hispanic, the Tea Party likes him. But that said, he's got issues, actually surprisingly, ironically, with Mexican-American voters.

Mark McKinnon

#31. My advice to the tea party freshmen: Slow the galloping horses to a trot. Big government was built over decades; it can't be dismantled in a year, especially when Democrats control the White House.

Ari Fleischer

#32. The tea party venerates the Constitution while despising the political system it has produced.

Gideon Rachman

#33. One thing Republican leaders, regardless of whether they love us or they hate us, have got to understand is there's no way in hell there will ever be another Republican president without the active engagement of the Tea Party masses and support of the Tea Party masses.

Niger Innis

#34. Even the klan revamped their image by losing the hoods and changing their name to the Tea Party.

Daniel Tosh

#35. Well, first of all, I think that a lot of the voters who are voting for the tea party candidates have really good impulses. That is, they believe that for years and years and years, the people with wealth and power or government power have done well and ordinary people have not. That's true.

William J. Clinton

#36. I'm a believer in the Tea Party. I love the Tea Party. I love the people in the Tea Party. And, yes, I have a lot of different likes and maybe dislikes. And I don't know why.

Donald Trump

#37. President Obama has only had two major policy victories during his tenure: the stimulus package and Obamacare. Both are massively unpopular. The stimulus package launched the Tea Party movement. Obamacare led to the Republican wipeout of 2010.

Ben Shapiro

#38. Make no mistake about it. These are not 'kookie' birds. Right now the greatest player, the big tent on the political scene in America, is called the Tea Party movement.

Dick Armey

#39. People will remember that the Tea Party was co-opted and funded by billion-dollar corporations, and that it was supported by Fox News and other outlets with the same vigor with which they attempt to denigrate the Occupy protesters.

Henry Rollins

#40. The Tea Party is protecting its millionaire and oil company friends while gutting critical services that they know protect the livelihood of African-Americans, as well as Latinos and other disadvantaged minorities,

Andre Carson

#41. We all have the dark, ignorant shadow inside us. I have worked endlessly to reveal it and heal it in me, but of course there's some primitive weird stuff in me. The Tea Party is about exhorting white supremacy, though, so I've had a tiny bit of trouble experiencing sympathy.

Anne Lamott

#42. If not for the Tea Party, the Republican Party would not be coming back to its roots.

Richard Mourdock

#43. Unlike the Tea Party, who see themselves as the customers of government, people in the Occupy Wall Street movement understand that we are the government. Stated most simply, we are trying to run a 21st-century society on a 13th-century economic operating system. It just doesn't work.

Douglas Rushkoff

#44. 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.

Hampton Sides

#45. Ironically, the rise of the Tea Party increased the interventions of the Fed that the movement denounced.

Yanis Varoufakis

#46. The Tea Party movement went off on a more extreme agenda that I did not support at all, and was very frustrated by it, to the point that not only did I change parties, I decided to do something about it and run for Congress.

Patrick Murphy

#47. Liberals have difficulty understanding the Tea Party because they think it is a bunch of selfish racists. But I think the Tea Party is driven in large part by concerns about fairness.

Jonathan Haidt

#48. In the Tea Party era, it is the restless conservative Republican who has become passion's plaything, the toy of impetuous romance, an erotomania only intensified by the lusting for an upstart savior.

James Wolcott

#49. The Tea Party we were told is only about economics; not true. It was always about economics and social issues. They just hid the social issues and now we just see who they really are.

Andrew Sullivan

#50. Many people, improperly, lump together libertarians and the Tea Parties. That's really wrong. Many of the libertarians are physicists, and many of the Tea Party people don't bathe. There's really not much in common there!

Alan Grayson

#51. 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.

Jimmy Carter

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

Kristi Noem

#53. I have a message from the Tea Party, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words. We've come to take our government back.

Rand Paul

#54. My fear is that the Tea Party gets a charismatic leader. Because all they're selling is fear and anger. And that's all Hitler sold. 'I'm angry and I'm frightened, and you should hate that guy over there.' And that's what they're doing.

Rob Reiner

#55. When you see John Boehner crying, believe you me, it's because he cannot control, uh, that wild contingency called the Tea Party.

Gwen Moore

#56. The Tea Party has imparted political energy to common-sense American constitutionalism.

Nancy Pearcey

#57. The Tea Party is a rear guard, not a vanguard.

Chuck Schumer

#58. Essentially, the Tea Party are the Hell's Angels, but with sun visors instead of switch blades. They push macaroni instead of meth. Mess with the Tea Party and they'll put your dog in an American flag sweater on a hot day.

Greg Gutfeld

#59. The Tea Party is clearing gunk out of the fuel lines of this country. It started with throwing out Democrats, but the Republicans are going to be next. We're doing what needs to be done for the sake of the country.

Brad Thor

#60. Our office corner has really become an area where the Tea party movement congregates and the rhetoric is really heated. Not just the calls but the e-mails, the slurs.

Gabrielle Giffords

#61. The fundamental weakness in the Tea Party machine is the stark difference between what the leaders of the Tea Party elite - plutocrats like the Koch Brothers -want and what the average grassroots Tea Party follower wants.

Chuck Schumer

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

Michele Bachmann

#63. President Obama hosted a state dinner for British Prime Minister David Cameron. The president and the British are getting along a lot better lately. They love to compare notes on ways the Tea Party's always trying to overthrow their rule in America.

Argus Hamilton

#64. Voters did say 'repeal health care', they did say 'reduce the size of government.' But not a single one of them from the tea party or anywhere said 'give tax breaks to the wealthiest.'

Chuck Schumer

#65. If you look underneath the surface of the Tea Party movement, on the other hand, you will find that it is not sophisticated. It's not like these people have read the economist Friedrich August von Hayek.

Karl Rove

#66. I love the Tea Party. They are the ultimate beer goggles. They make everything look better.

Bill Maher

#67. 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?

Bill O'Reilly

#68. If the tea party is so racist, how come when they have straw polls the black guy keeps winning?

Herman Cain

#69. Beating the tea party gang is more important than who does the beating.

Arlen Specter

#70. Another novelty is the tea-party, an extraordinary meal in that, being offered to persons that have already dined well, it supposes neither appetite nor thirst, and has no object but distraction, no basis but delicate enjoyment.

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

#71. New Rule: Whenever you think the Tea Party can't get any dumber, they get dumber. Now they're in love with Donald Trump. Because nothing says "We're serious about fiscal responsibility" quite like a billionaire whose corporations have filed for bankruptcy three times.

Bill Maher

#72. Like a cowboy saddling a bucking stallion, Republican leaders tried to tame the Tea Party while riding it to victories.

Ron Fournier

#73. There is no struggle, rift, fight between those who claim the banner of the tea party and those who are in the Republican Party. We work together.

Michael Steele

#74. I see a lot of parallels between my candidacy and the Tea Party. I would not have been elected had there not been a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction and discouragement and disgust with what was going on in Washington.

Jimmy Carter

#75. 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.

Sharron Angle

#76. The myopic obsession of the Tea Party with destroying health care reform and wounding the president has led Republicans astray.

Hank Johnson

#77. And the Tea Party represents many of us who believe that we are taxed enough already. We believe in free markets.

Tim Scott

#78. We must stop the Tea Party before the United States Senate falls into the hands of extremists and ideologues who leave no room for reason or compromise, who don't recognize common ground even when they're standing on it.

Harry Reid

#79. He was undoubtedly intelligent and well informed, but too right-wing for Grane's tastes. It was rare to find a well-educated Swede who was also a wholehearted supporter of the American Republican Party - he even expressed some sympathy for the Tea Party movement.

David Lagercrantz

#80. There is a strong sentiment within the Tea Party that favors a stronger America on the global stage, and with that comes a strong alliance with the State of Israel.

Adam Hasner

#81. 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.

Sharron Angle

#82. There is a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado page on the Colorado Tea Party site as well, talking about him joining the Tea Party last year. Now, we don't know if this is the same Jim Holmes. But it's Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado.

Brian Ross

#83. The Tea Party folks may be sincere, loyal citizens, but their notions about how the economy works are exactly that: mere notions. Their core notion is that government needs to do nothing more than get out of the way of business in order for the economy to boom and bloom.

David Horsey

#84. The way to lessen the grip of the Tea Party on the electoral process would be to do what a handful have done and have a primary where all voters, members of every party, can vote, and the top two vote-getters then enter a runoff.

Chuck Schumer

#85. The tea party movement and its passion arose in response to trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see and out of a sense that Washington is in need of dire fiscal reform.

Ari Fleischer

#86. The Tea Party
I had a little tea party
This afternoon at three.
'Twas very small-
Three guest in all-
Just I, myself and me.
Myself ate all the sandwiches,
While I drank up the tea;
'Twas also I who ate the pie
And passed the cake to me. Jessica Nelson North

Jessica Nelson North

#87. The reality of it is I think the GOP - Republicans and certainly conservatives - will partner with the Tea Party movement around this country.

Michael Steele

#88. As in nature, politics abhors a vacuum. Without a strong voice for more moderate leadership, the Tea Party is filling that vacuum.

Mark McKinnon

#89. The Tea Party people are ideologues. They are right, and no one can change their minds. There is no reason for compromise.

Chuck Schumer

#90. One way the Tea Party has benefited female candidates - and the conservative movement generally - is by consciously steering clear of social issues.

Hanna Rosin

#91. There are good people and bad people in all organizations fundamentally however, when you look at the basis of the Tea Party it has nothing to do with race. It has to do with an economic recovery. It has to do with limiting the role of our government in our lives. It has to do with free markets.

Tim Scott

#92. First of all, just because the Tea Party people appear to be generally uneducated, ignorant about the political process, ignorant about economics, confused about their own platform from the beginning, and indelicate when it comes to the craft of diplomacy, doesn't mean they're wrong.

Steven Van Zandt

#93. 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.

John Boozman

#94. The Republican Party is like the corpse in 'Weekend at Bernies' and the Tea Party is like the two guys who put sunglasses and a party hat on it and drag it around.

Bill Maher

#95. Obama is to the Tea Party as the moon is to werewolves.

Julian Bond

#96. I mean, people who say that the Tea Party isn't a grassroots movement, I think, are incorrect. I think in some respects, it is a grassroots movement.

Matt Taibbi

#97. The problem with the Tea Party is they're all ignorant hillbillies who drink moonshine and ride around on mules. And they believe in stereotypes too.

Jon Stewart

#98. 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.

Steve Capus

#99. When you stop and look at so much of the kind of activism that has been triggered, the Tea Party and the like, as a result of Obama's efforts - TARP, the stimulus package, and now the health care reform - there is a lot of sense this government is changing.

Juan Williams

#100. But to say that Sarah Palin and the tea party movement is responsible for vandalism or threats is just a way to dismiss the American people and, and their dissatisfaction with this health care bill.

Laura Ingraham