Brian Stelter Quotes

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

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.

Sarah Palin may have chosen to not answer the call for the presidency, but make no mistake, the principles that garnered her the unique support she enjoyed continue to inform and drive the base that lifted her.

That's what the right-wing is good at: figuring out the left wing.

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.

I'm a Reagan Republican, which means I don't speak ill of other Republicans.

Charles and David Koch, two billionaire brothers, have been funding the infrastructure behind the Republican Party's right-ward shift since at least 1980.

We say Paul Ryan was grown in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation.

In 1980, I watched my first Republican convention with my grandfather.

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

I will absolutely be supporting the Republican platform and voting for Mr. Trump.

I tried to salvage the situation with the Republican Party for a long time. We've had for decades a departure from the fundamental values of the Republican Party and from America.

Truthfully, with the Republicans, I don't see that much wrong with them.

Let the RINOs start a third party

I think Donald Trump is trying to use populist rhetoric to cover up a right-wing agenda.

Lee Atwater,[Ronald] Reagan's strategist, had no patience for CPAC, because he thought they were sort of wild and immature, basically.

I refuse to listen to Rush Limbaugh. I listen to a lot of conservative radio when I drive around in my car. I refuse to listen to him because he's just ridiculous, just a clown. I love Rachel Maddow obviously.

There's a line of thinking about Ted Cruz.

The white backlash has been at work for a long time. It's been part and parcel of the Republican Party for the last 25 years or so, and it's been highly successful up until Barack Obama was ingeniously able to come up with strategies to deal with it.

Donald Trump is the least unpopular thing about today's Republican Party. I mean, the idea that a Mitch McConnell or a Paul Ryan could say, "Let's toss Trump overboard and return to our program of plutocratic politics, health care removal, massive income tax cuts for the affluent, deregulation of finance" - if they cut loose from Donald Trump, it's like, you know, storm in channel, continent cut off. If they cut loose from him, they are much likelier to sink.

I was a severely conservative Republican governor.

I'm more of a Tea Party person.

The function of liberal Republicans is to shoot the wounded after battle.

In addition to trying to do the right thing and obey the law and follow principle, there's a part of the conservative, slash, Republican movement that believes if we just show that we're fair and impeccable, then we will get credit from those who think we're all these horrible things, and maybe they won't hate us as much.

Marco Rubio was the darling of the Tea Party. Marco Rubio was elected as a Tea Party conservative Republican. Marco Rubio was sent to Washington clearly with the belief that he was part of a new conservative majority that was not tied to the establishment.