Quotes & Sayings About Tea Party Movement

The thing they're trying to stop is 30-million people getting health insurance. That's the substance. — Chris Hayes

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

Without elders, much of our history has been formed by juniors reacting, overreacting, and protecting their own temporary privilege, with no deep-time vision like the Iroquois Nation, which considered, "What would be good for the next seven generations?" Compare that to the present "Tea Party" movement in America. — Richard Rohr

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

Occupy is really the first sustained response to this. People have referred to the Tea Party as a response, but that is highly misleading. The Tea Party is relatively affluent, white. Its influence and power come from the fact that it has enormous corporate support and heavy finance. Parts of the corporate world simply see them as their shock troops, but it's not a movement in the serious sense that Occupy is. — Noam Chomsky

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

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. — Mike Lee

But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. — David Frum

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

Grassroots Tea Party activism therefore marries participatory engagement and considerable learning about the workings of government with factually ungrounded beliefs about the content of policies. If people actively engage in the political process but on mistaken premises, is that good or bad for democracy? Our heads are left spinning. — Theda Skocpol

I call it small government, grass-roots activism: The Tea Party activists are a part of it, FreedomWorks is part of it. FreedomWorks is the longest-standing, most active organization within this movement. — Dick Armey

This kind of compartmentalizing - separating one's livelihood from one's social aspirations - is part of the reason David Koch, the hidden hand behind a lot of ultraconservatives and, reportedly, the Tea Party movement in the United States, transforms himself into a respected arts patron by funding a theater at Lincoln Center, or why at Swiss bank that helps U.S. depositors avoid paying taxes generously supports symphony halls and the ballet. It's almost as if there are moral scales, and by tossing some loot on one side, you can balance out the precarious situation your reputation might be getting into on the other. — David Byrne

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

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

The Occupy movement needs an organizing principle, and - just as the Tea Party did - it needs some actual measures of success. Choose one candidate whose agenda is squarely within that of the movement and make his or her electoral success a focal point. — Eliot Spitzer

The contemporary populist Right is a bastard child of corporate America, which has subsidized the Tea Party via front groups like American for Prosperity and the Club for Growth ever since the movement's beginning on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Its real, as opposed to stated, purpose was to distract and channel the inchoate popular longing for a change in the status quo... p 234 — Mike Lofgren

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. — Luke Scott

We've just gone through this period of years where the players in the game were at least written about as being a Democratic administration, establishment Republicans, and then the rabble-rousing radicals of the tea party. And it was like a three-way negotiation between them. But we are going to enter an era where there's a physical, powerful, vibrant progressive movement that will, I think, be able to exercise power in the same way as the right-wing and the right does. — Ben Wikler

We owe Clint Eastwood a debt of thanks. Not only because it was truly a hilarious twelve minutes of improvised "awesome" in a week of scripted "blah".
But because it advanced our understanding.
This president has issues, and there are very legitimate debates about his policies and actions, and successes and or failures as president - I mean, tune in next week. But I could never wrap my head around why the world, and the president republicans describe, bears so little resemblance to the world and the president that I experience. And now I know why :
There is a president Obama that only republicans can see — Jon Stewart

Washington is horribly broken. We are encountering a day of reckoning and this movement, this Tea Party movement, is a message to Washington that we're unhappy and that we want things done differently. — Rand Paul

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

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

The liberal feminist movement never imagined that women would take seriously the encouragement to become our own heroes and claim life for ourselves, on our terms, no matter who we are. Pro-choice and pro-life, Christian and not, poor and rich, black, white, gay and straight. It is a dream we all hold dear, and it's called the Tea Party. — Tammy Bruce

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. — Marco Rubio

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

It's really interesting that we've had this great Tea Party movement that is all about restoring free market capitalist values, but what they completely fail to understand is that what we've got now is a situation where there is a small class of gigantic financial companies that have put themselves above capitalism. — Matt Taibbi

'Rage' is the word that most often attaches itself to the Tea Party movement, and it's true that, from the outside looking in, their public demonstrations appear to be more enraged than any political events in America since the race riots and anti-war protests of the 1960s. — Jonathan Raban

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

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

Let us be clear about one thing: The tea party movement is not seeking a junior partnership with the Republican Party, but a hostile takeover of it. — Matt Kibbe

But I think the - what the tea party movement demonstrates, and I think the, the, the enthusiasm that we're seeing from independents and Republicans, is that if Washington isn't going to change itself, then we're going to change Washington. And I think that's what we're seeing. — John Cornyn

English does not distinguish between arrogant-up (irreverence toward the temporarily powerful) and arrogant-down (directed at the small guy). — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

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

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. — Noam Chomsky

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

Herman Cain is probably well-liked by some of the Republicans because it hides the racist elements of the Republican Party, conservative movement and tea party movement. People like Karl Rove like to keep the racism very covert and so Herman Cain provides this great opportunity so he can say, 'Look: This is not a racist anti-immigrant, anti-female, anti-gay movement. Look: We have a black man.' And look he's polling well and he won a straw poll. — Janeane Garofalo

The only tactic liberals have is to try to intimidate people into thinking the Tea Party is racist. The Tea Party is not a racist movement, period! If they were, why would the straw polls keep showing that the black guy is winning? That's a rhetorical question. Let me state it: The black guy keeps winning. — Herman Cain

In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility. — Nelson Mandela

All this was lies. It was nasty, baseless, and ridiculous - there was far more evidence of anti-Semitism in the Occupy movement than there was evidence of racism within the Tea Party. But that didn't stop the media from trying. In fact, they and their friends tried so hard to label the Tea Party racist that they stooped to planting faux racists, including faux Nazis, at Tea Parties, just to gin up racial controversy. The Tea Parties threw the infiltrators out. — Ben Shapiro

Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one's opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness. — Mary Frances Berry

Remember the Tea Party movement didn't get started in September of 2008 when the bank bailout was passed. It really began on Feb. 19th, 2009 when a television commentator named Rick Santelli stood up and said what the hell are we doing bailing out people who couldn't afford a mortgage by taking money from people like me who are prudent? — Karl Rove

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. — Mark McKinnon

There are people who are genuinely upset in the Tea Party. I understand that. But that movement was funded with seed money from right-wing billionaires, the Koch brothers, and promoted on Fox News, and turned into a stocking horse for the right-wing agenda that a lot of people have been trying to push on the country for a long time. — Al Gore

The Republican Party would be really smart to absorb as much of the Tea Party movement as possible. — Sarah Palin

Ironically, the rise of the Tea Party increased the interventions of the Fed that the movement denounced. — Yanis Varoufakis

I ran for office originally as part of this Tea Party Movement because we were upset with Republicans who've doubled the debt. We were upset with Republicans that bailed out the banks. — Rand Paul

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

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

I know within my organization, within the grassroots of my organization of the Tea Party movement generally, there's going to be a big drive for impeaching Obama. I don't know if that's the right move ... We need to play our cards very carefully and beware of the mouse trap that Obama might be trying to set for us. — Niger Innis

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

My political views have since I was a kid someway or another reflected the concerns of Tea Party movement. — Mike Lee

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

Republicans know well that a change of rhetorical pace is necessary. But efforts by their leaders to damp down the bellicosity of newly elected Tea Party types is running into the fact that the Tea Partiers have only the high volume setting on their amplifiers, just like Palin. They're like a couple having a fight at a funeral; politely sotto voce, then suddenly bursting out fortissimo with their plaints and accusations. — Alexander Cockburn

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

Don't let any of 'em in the room 'til my guy gets what he needs. We'll be outta here before they get their gloves on.
Tea Party Teddy's Legacy — Dianne Harman

I think the Tea Party movement is great. I think anybody who has been frustrated over the last few years with the Republicans and Democrats, when they were trying to grow government and have spending and we weren't focusing on creating jobs and get our private sector growing again, I think that's when people started to wake up. — Ben Quayle