Rick Santelli Quotes

You know, the Tea Party is a - first of all, it is a significant movement, and I think the media and some pundits have tried to write it off as a bunch of cranks or something. But, in fact, it's really a very legitimate and fairly significant swath of voters out there.

A lot of what you have seen with third-party groups - like the Tea Party - these folks are conservative, and they are fed up with people in Washington who are not working for them but against them.

I was Tea Party years before there was an official Tea Party.

Starting and feeding into the cultural war is absolutely unequivocally wrong for us as a nation and bad for the conservative movement.

'Rage' is the word that most often attaches itself to the Tea Party movement, and it's true that, from the outside looking in, their public demonstrations appear to be more enraged than any political events in America since the race riots and anti-war protests of the 1960s.

The Tea Party did not run me out. If you know me and my personality, I would welcome the challenge.

The myopic obsession of the Tea Party with destroying health care reform and wounding the president has led Republicans astray.

Tea party members of Congress do not want to legislate. They want to remonstrate.

The Tea Party movement itself is maybe 15, 20 percent of the electorate. It's relatively affluent, white, nativist. You know, it has rather traditional nativist streaks to it. But what is much more important, I think, is the - is its outrage.

People will remember that the Tea Party was co-opted and funded by billion-dollar corporations, and that it was supported by Fox News and other outlets with the same vigor with which they attempt to denigrate the Occupy protesters.

I would like to be one of the people responsible for getting Elizabeth Warren out of politics. She's a nightmare. The Left's holding her up as the second coming of Hillary Clinton; Lord knows we don't need the first.

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

Even at its most outrageous early moments, the Tea Party movement was treated to sober and at times breathless media coverage, to the point of being invited to co-host a presidential debate.

I mean, people who say that the Tea Party isn't a grassroots movement, I think, are incorrect. I think in some respects, it is a grassroots movement.

I understand Tea Partyers' anger with the system, but they are in way over their heads and often racially motivated, and I can't be part of that.

I respect Rush Limbaugh; he is a national conservative leader, and in no way do I want to diminish his voice.

According to the people who dearly would love to throw him out of office, Barack Obama was elected to be 'above politics.' He wasn't elected to be president, after all. He was elected as an avatar of American tolerance. His attempts to get himself reelected imply a certain, well, ingratitude.

Well it's really hard to satisfy the right wing. I can tell you that.

The problem with the Tea Party is that it's been used in a way that scares people into supporting an agenda that's counter to their own interests.

If there is true evil in the world - it is Republican conservatives.

One way the Tea Party has benefited female candidates - and the conservative movement generally - is by consciously steering clear of social issues.

First, I think more Americans need to declare their independence from partisan politics on both sides. The more that Americans declare their independence, the more the parties will have to compete for their votes using reason rather than the hateful appeals.

Every day, I come home with a spring in my step. We've got to work together to stop the Obama agenda and take this country back.

Sometimes people credit me for the Tea Party. It's actually the other way around.

I wish it were simply a nightmare, but I think that any reasonable person watching American politics would come to the conclusion that a second Bush administration would in fact incorporate a more radicalized version of what we've seen in the first administration.