Ross Douthat Quotes

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

I was raised a Republican but I don’t recognize a once proud party that has been hijacked by extremists who are driving it off the flat earth that they pretend we are living on.

The Tea Party isn't out to be a third force in American politics. Instead, it has infiltrated the Republicans and remoulded them in its own image.

My view is that Trump will not change the Republican Party, America's right-of-center party. If he brings in new followers, that's great, and well worth the effort, but he will not change the Republican Party.

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.

Republicans have the habit of giving their possible presidential candidates a saliva test for purity, and then bitching for 4 years because they lost the last election..

This is the classic fight between the moderate Republicans who try to get to the middle by compromise and the conservative Republicans who try to create a new middle by driving the left away.

The Tea Party definitely scored a significant victory with Senator Cruz's election in 2012 and scored victories in some statewide primaries. But to me, as the Tea Party gets stronger within the Republican Party in Texas, the prospect of a blue Texas becomes stronger and stronger.

The tea party movement has challenged the GOP to get back on track or risk losing its grip on the right wing. It's reminded Democrats that a slick marketing campaign coupled with paid activism isn't the same as a groundswell of real change, and the reason that Democrats are so hostile towards it is because they've never before encountered it.

In America today, unfortunately, the right wing has been totally commandeered by the Tea Party, and it's a bad thing for our party.

Not all Republicans in the class of 2010 owe their seats to the Tea Party. But many do.

The Republican Party, right now, is a conservative populist party.

As the Republican Party has moved farther and farther to the right, I have found myself increasingly at odds with the Republican philosophy and more in line with the philosophy of the Democratic Party.

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

The Tea Party is almost solely grassroots-based; business interests have almost no grassroots organization. The Republican Party has for too long been run on behalf of business interests who favor candidates the grassroots hate; the minute that those candidates begin to flag, only loyal Tea Partiers stand behind them.

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

I've been a conservative in West Virginia before that was popular. I've seen a change in West Virginia. Not a change in John Raese, but a change in West Virginia and a change in America.

I knew if I waited long enough, the Republican Party would rock.

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.

If the Republican Party continues to ignore its conservative base, then the Party is headed to oblivion.

Well, the tough thing for them is that the Republican primary is pretty far over to the right, just as the Democratic primary is further over to the left than the average voter in each party.

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.

Barry Goldwater made conservatism so unattractive I wouldn't have voted for it myself.

There were more moderate Republicans in those days than there are today.

Left-wing confusion spawns right-wing reaction.