Marco Rubio Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

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?

I do think the Tea Party position will prevail, and I am often asked: 'What has the Tea Party done and is it even still alive?' People think because there have been no demonstrations with the 'Don't Tread on Me' flag it's gone, but it hasn't.

You know I have had Tea Party support.

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.

People ask me if I'm the father of the Tea Party movement... I was the spark... that started it.

The Tea Party movement started in late 2008 as a rejection of President George W. Bush's bailout of the auto industry and Obama's excessive stimulus spending. It evolved into a movement opposed to ObamaCare, and grassroots efforts were employed to find qualified political candidates who could beat incumbents.

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

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.

The Tea Party and the like are about what we can't do, instead of the American ideal of what we can.

Don't get me wrong, I am a proud Republican, and I want to support my party. I am a firm believer in the Republican principles of smaller government, low taxes and economic freedom. I have spent my time in government service fighting for these principles.

I don't believe we need any more taxes. We need to curtail the size of government. That seems to be a common thread among a majority of Americans out there that understand that we have to limit the size and scope of our government.

Once our country is fully engulfed in a debt crisis, our economy will be torn apart, and every American will be a victim of the federal government's failure to prevent this disaster.

Folks know that while I respect Barack Obama and do not cheap-shot the president, I am very skeptical of his big government, nanny-state philosophy.

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.

The conservative movement today is like that tall ship with its proud captain: strong, accomplished but veering off course into the dangerous and uncharted waters of big government republicanism.

We have to attack those things which stand in the way of America progress. And what stands in the way of American progress right now is the federal government.

The American people have made it abundantly clear that they want less government, not more. They want problems solved in a bipartisan manner, not the creation of new problems.

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.

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

The Tea Party claims to want small government.

I'm a conservative. I believe in the idea of freedom and liberty, but more importantly, look at my voting background. I voted against bailing out Wall Street. I voted against, never voted for, a tax increase.