Tea Party Rhetoric Quotes & Sayings

Ever since it formed, the Tea Party has struck me as a kind of weird generational echo, forty years on, of the young leftists of the late 1960s. The 1960s leftists, like the Tea Party now, had unrealistic goals and were hostile to compromise. Both saw themselves as cultural forces up against a shadowy establishment. Both treated politics as street theater and had a curious fondness for using violent rhetoric and making apocalyptic pronouncements. Generationally speaking, the 1960s Left and the Right of today are the same group... p. 232 — Mike Lofgren

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