Tea Party Quotes

This nation has been through hard times. But those hard times have hardened our resolve. I'm ready to do the difficult work ahead. But I want to do that work with Barack Obama, and not a Tea Party ideologue. We can move America forward, but we can only do it together. ~ Harry Reid

They start the day confident, braced, believing themselves desired at Miss Smith's tea party; they say to themselves as they go into the room, I am the superior of half the people here, and it is thus that they speak with that self-confidence, that self-assurance, which have had such profound consequences in public life and lead to such curious notes in the margin of the private mind. ~ Virginia Woolf

I love the Tea Party. They are the ultimate beer goggles. They make everything look better. ~ Bill Maher

Welcome back, Lydia. How was the tea party?"
"Yes. …...Actually, Edgar, there's something I have to apologise to you about."
"Did something happen?"
"I told everyone that I'm not of noble birth."
"Oh, is that all."
"'Is that all'... They might think you're not a proper aristocrat for having married a commoner."
"Let them think what they want. An aristocrat's true worth isn't their social position or their lineage, but their personal pride. They don't have any proper pride, and that's why they're particular about that sort of thing. ~ Mizue Tani

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

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

The House Of Commons has never been a tea-party. It consists of strong-minded, often very idealistic people, who are trying to accomplish something for our country. We are inheritors of an adversarial system and that, in itself, fosters conflict. ~ John Allen Fraser

If not for the Tea Party, the Republican Party would not be coming back to its roots. ~ Richard Mourdock

I am an American, proud to be an American, proud to be a black American. I'm not African-American. I've never been to Africa. I'm an American that is black and my　– and I'm proud to be a black that submits to my Christianity. I am proud to be just a man. I mean a man's man, not a metro sexual, not one that gets his nails done. I mean a man that used to get out there and knock heads and get his fingernails dirty. I'm proud of being a man, but my manhood submits to my Christianity, but I don't see that in Al Sharpton. Any time anything happens that attacks his blackness, he fears it and　– because he has nothing else to stand on. Thus, when the real civil rights movement of everyone steps up, when we're saying the Tea Party, don't take being discriminated against. If a black person was kicked out of a hotel for being black down in Florida, it would be an uproar, but since the Tea Party was kicked out because of their political views, that's going against America. That's why we're here going against the Constitution, with certain unalienable rights. That is the true fight we must start and we must fight today like never before. ~ Ken Hutcherson

Blue was a fanciful, but sensible thing. Like a platypus, or one of those sandwiches that had been cut into circles for a fancy tea party. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Anarchists have taken over (the GOP). ~ Harry Reid

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

highway wildflowers swaying like the ocean. queen anne's lace like doilies for a tea party never attended. this is a conversation between two parts of yourself. the fever will break soon, but until then i'll be untangling you from the knots in my windblown hair. i smell like a wet forest, like long grass covered in sequins. i called your name but was drowned out by the thunder. i remember you murmuring, "please," while you took my shirt off. i remember you and the airy "please" when you pulled me toward you by my legs. i remember "pleeease" while i learned how to let go. i remember your divine "please." chanting it as if it'd draw a demon out of hiding. "please, please, please." and i screamed, "yes. ~ Taylor Rhodes

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

I've long thought that Marco Rubio would make a strong G.O.P. candidate for president. While he was brought into office by surfing on the Tea Party wave, he has proven himself not to be wedded to the frequent lunacy of those folks. ~ Kurt Eichenwald

It's obvious that a lot of Tea Party members tend to be elderly. You've seen that famous sign, 'Tell the government to keep its hands off my Medicare.' And I think as long as the government does keep its hands off their Medicare, they're fine with talking about low taxes. But once they start to realize that the Republicans really do want to not just cut Medicare, but essentially abolish it, you know, I just think those people are not going to be part of the Tea Party. They're going to be over with Occupy Wall Street. ~ Bruce Bartlett

Lex told me I'm not allowed to be an asshole about this, but I am not fucking around here. If you hurt Nessa, even a tiny bit, I'll make Jim's scary book look like a fucking princess tea party. Do we have an understanding?" "O'Kane-" "If I'd been a little smarted, a little better, she'd still have a father. She's family, in every fucking way that counts. I will ruin anyone that makes her cry. ~ Kit Rocha

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

This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.
At any rate I'll never go THERE again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life! ~ Lewis Carroll

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

I am going home. You and your lady can stay here and rot. Or have a tea party. I really don't care. ~ Rosamund Hodge

Every time the media brings up the tea party, it's painted as racist and extremists
but there's never a backlash, no outrage to those comparisons ... Working-class people are hurting
and it doesn't seem like anybody cares. When both sides are high-fiving it on the ninth hole when everybody else is without a job
it makes a whole lot of us angry. Something has to change. The policies have to change. ~ Hank Williams, Jr.

The only way we will ever reduce the debt and balance the budget is if America beats Washington and tea party activists take over this process. ~ Matt Kibbe

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

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

Is that . . . has it all been for that? The tea party, the letters, what you said at the festival . . . all of it, no more than an attempt to steal my heart so you could take it back to your queen?'
'The easiest way to steal something,' Jest murmured, 'is for it to be given willingly. ~ Marissa Meyer

But down from the end of the path it looked so charming that she wished she could paint it in watercolours - the great trees, the tempered sunlight, the glimpse of the old church at one end, the glimpse of the embosomed lake at the other, and in the middle, set out so neatly, with such a grace of spotlessness, the table of her first tea-party. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

The tea party saved the Republican Party. In a broad sense, the tea party rescued it from being the fat, unhappy, querulous creature it had become, a party that didn't remember anymore why it existed, or what its historical purpose was. The tea party, with its energy and earnestness, restored the GOP to itself. ~ Peggy Noonan

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'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

Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea. ~ T. S. Eliot

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

To some extent, the mainstream's absence means the Tea Party is the Republican Party. ~ David Remnick

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

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

He came here meaning to take your heart, but it was clear from the night he brought you to the tea party that he was going to lose his, instead. ~ Marissa Meyer

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

Democrats cannot win elections without capturing the votes of independent-minded swing voters. And that is where writing off the Tea Party as a bunch of racist kooks becomes self-destructive. The Tea Party outrage over health-care reform, deficit spending and entitlements run amok is no fringe concern. ~ Juan Williams

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

The tea party venerates the Constitution while despising the political system it has produced. ~ Gideon Rachman

The Tea Party has an important voice in the country and now they have a voice in the U.S. Senate. ~ Mike Lee

What a day for the Tea Party people. Did you see that? America's parks and fairgrounds were lost in a sea of man-boobs. They were venting their anger and rage against taxes, which, of course, in most cases for them went down. Protesting their taxes went down, but you know, why let the truth spoil a perfectly good Klan rally. ~ Bill Maher

She had been to a tea-party with an antediluvian monster, and that they had been waited on by up-to-date men-servants. ~ Bram Stoker

You can't just have slogans, you can't just have catchy phrases. You have to have an agenda. And I think what the Republican Party has to do, if it's going to incorporate the tea party efforts in it, is to come up with an agenda that the American people can see, touch, and actually believe in, and something they believe in. ~ Colin Powell

A Lake Charles-based artist, Sally was a progressive Democrat who in 2016 primary favored Bernie Sanders. Sally's very dear friend and worl-traveling flight attendant from Opelousas, Louisiana, Shirley was an enthusiast for the Tea Party and Donald Trump. Both woman had joined sororities at LSU. Each had married, had three children, lived in homes walking distance apart in Lake Charles, and had keys to each other's houses. Each loved the other's children. Shirley knew Sally's parents and even consulted Sally's mother when the two go to "fussing to much." They exchanged birthday and Christmas gifts and jointly scoured the newspaper for notices of upcoming cultural events they had, when they were neighbors in Lake Charles, attended together. One day when I was staying as Shirley's overnight guest in Opelousas, I noticed a watercolor picture hanging on the guestroom wall, which Sally had painted as a gift for Shirley's eleven-year-old daughter, who aspired to become a ballerina. With one pointed toe on a pudgy, pastel cloud, the other lifted high, the ballerina's head was encircled by yellow star-like butterflies. It was a loving picture of a child's dream--one that came true. Both women followed the news on TV--Sally through MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, and Shirley via Fox News's Charles Krauthammer, and each talked these different reports over with a like-minded husband. The two women talk by phone two or three times a week, and their grown children keep in touch, partly across the ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild

The religious and economic alliance represented in the Tea {arty remains misunderstood and out of the public eye. The Tea Party movement was formed primarily as an antitax movement, and that limiting government spending and reducing taxes, drawing on the symbols of the Boston Tea Party. As important as these initial catalysts were, the power for the movement came from its adoption of white evangelical conservatives. ~ Gerardo Marti

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

My biographer said that my parties reminded them of a vicarage tea party, with sex thrown in. ~ Cynthia Payne

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

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

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

Summer in England THOSE WORDS ARE SUPPOSED TO CONJURE UP HALCYON SUNNY afternoons; the smell of new-mown hay, little old ladies on bicycles pedaling past the village green on their way to the church jumble sale, the vicar's tea party, the crunching sound of a fast-bowled cricket ball fracturing the batsman's skull, and so on. ~ Charles Stross

Tea Party Republicans, in an effort to kill the farm bill will stereotype and make racial comments about food stamps - which is a big element to the program. ~ Eleanor Clift

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

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

Discretion is a polite word for hypocrisy.
Tea Party Teddy ~ Dianne Harman

When [Marco] Rubio won the election, he was a Tea Party darling, he was a Tea Party favorite. What happened? "Gang of Eight". ~ Rush Limbaugh

I have long said there are three distinct groups under the GOP's tent: theological warriors, who want to impose their social views on the rest of society; Tea Party zealots, who say with a straight face that they want the government to get out of their Medicare; and remnants of the pro-business moderates. ~ Eliot Spitzer

As the Republicans run to the crazy Tea Party right, they leave behind the huge mass of genuinely moderate and independent Americans that make up the majority of voters. The ones that used to consider themselves now-extinct moderate Republicans. They're up for grabs. And the Democrats have to grab them! ~ Jennifer Granholm

In the Tea Party narrative, victory at the polls means a new American revolution, one that will 'take our country back' from everyone they disapprove of. But what they don't realize is, there's a catch: This is America, and we have an entrenched oligarchical system in place that insulates us all from any meaningful political change. ~ Matt Taibbi

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

I have a lot of fans in the Tea Party, and they disagree with me vehemently. But they're fans, so we meet and connect and talk, so I'm open to everything. ~ Lupe Fiasco

She was a quiet girl, a thoughtful girl. But you never could tell what was going on in that pretty little head of hers. Whether she was planning her next tea party; or a plot to take over the world. ~ N.R. Hart

I was warmly embraced by the Tea Party. They openly seek more minorities. ~ Tim Scott

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

It's ironic that the Tea Party populists, most of whom believe that they are furthering the American ideal of "rugged individualism," are supporting mega-corporate-friendly policies like Reaganomics and Clintonomics and are making it very difficult for individuals to be anything other than drones in a giant corporate-run economic machine. And, on the flipside, those countries that call themselves "democratic socialist" in their organization - Finland, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden - actually provide a deep and fertile soil into which entrepreneurs may plant new businesses. ~ Thom Hartmann

Yes we need enhanced border control. Yes we need to focus our efforts on those who pose a threat to our country. But let's not fall into the trap set by the Tea Party and others who would tell you that every single undocumented individual is a drug smuggler, a terrorist, or a threat to the American way of life. That is simply not true. ~ Michael Nutter

When I am alone, I drink my tea with pinkie raised, like a kid playing "tea party." At times, a fancy British accent is involved. Dahling! ~ Christy Hall

The Tea Party is but one manifestation of a widening perception that the game is rigged in favor of the rich and powerful. ~ Robert Reich

Many people today think that the Tea Act - which led to the Boston Tea Party - was simply an increase in the taxes on tea paid by the American colonists. That's where the whole "Taxation Without Representation" meme came from.

Instead, the purpose of the Tea Act was to give the East India Company full and unlimited access to the American tea trade and to exempt the company from having to pay taxes to Britain on tea exported to the American colonies. It even gave the company a tax refund on millions of pounds of tea that it was unable to sell and holding in inventory.

In other words, the Tea Act was the largest corporate tax break in the history of the world. ~ Thom Hartmann

Twenty-two percent of Americans say their primary news source is Fox News. It's divided our country in a way that we haven't been divided probably since the Civil War, and its empowered large corporations to get certain kinds of politicians and ideologues who are in the United State Congress elected
the Tea Party ideologues who control the Republican Party. ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Is Romney a tea party candidate? I'd probably say that he's the least of the candidates running for president right now that would be considered a tea party candidate. ~ Tim Scott

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

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

The Tea Party knows that continuing to delay charting a course to spending reform hurts everybody. ~ Bob Barr

The Tea Party doesn't like politicians. ~ Jim DeMint

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

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year ... A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the tea party brigades have all the intensity. ~ David Brooks

The row of dolls watched her impassively from the bookshelf, their tea party propriety almost certainly offended. ~ Holly Black

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. ~ Jennifer Granholm

And my principles go right in line with the Tea Party. ~ Renee Ellmers

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

The sun danced through the small leaves of the oak, turning them saffron and dappling the blankets with the ghosts of baby leaves. Ewan very seriously filled all the glasses with bluebells, and gave them water from the stream, so the picnic turned from a very formal affair, all heavy silver and starched linen, to a child's tea party. ~ Eloisa James

A loose definition of the Tea Party might be fifteen million pissed-off white people sent chasing after Mexicans on Medicaid by the small handful of banks and investment companies who advertise on Fox and CNBC. ~ Matt Taibbi

I saw the Fall of Troy! World War Five! I was pushing boxes at the Boston Tea Party! Now I'm gonna die in a dungeon ... [disgustedly] in Cardiff! ~ Russell T. Davies

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

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

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

When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag ... As for the types of comments I make, sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence. ~ George S. Patton

The Tea Party has imparted political energy to common-sense American constitutionalism. ~ Nancy Pearcey

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

I think the Tea Party has brought important issues to the table. ~ Roy Blunt

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

To all those people who say that the Tea Party is a racist organization, eat your words. ~ Herman Cain

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

(the Boston Tea Party was the work of 1777-era frat boys) ~ Marisha Pessl

I'm always just carrying a Tupperware cup, ever since my mom went to a Tupperware party and got 'em. I've left them strewn all over the U.S. and Europe. I drink iced tea out of them. ~ Si Robertson

Top IRS officials specifically targeted tea party groups and misled the public about its secret political targeting program led by ex-official Lois Lerner, according to a bombshell new congressional report. ~ Patrick Howley

The Tea Party claims to want small government. ~ Penn Jillette

What do you think this is, a f****** tea party? No you can't have a f****** glass of water, you can f****** wait like the rest of us. ~ Allan Border