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?

The more laws that governments pass, the less individual freedom there is. Any student of history will tell you that. Totalitarian countries ban pretty much everything.

The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals. We're Americans. We just want to be treated like everybody else. That is a compelling argument. And to deny that, you've got to have a very strong argument on the other side. And the other side hasn't been able to do anything but thump the Bible ... I support civil unions, I always have. All right, the gay marriage thing, I don't feel that strongly about it one way or the other.

There are people who don`t like women holding power.

We told you this would happen, if gay marriage is legalized, then much chaos would follow.

Back in 1998, he [Tom Hanks] gave the maximum amount of money that he could to Bill Clinton's defense fund. This is a man who was against gay marriage, as was Hillary Clinton.

I was an advocate of the deregulation movement and I made - along with a lot of other smart people - a fundamental mistake. The financial industry undergirded the entire economy and if it is made riskier by deregulation and collapses in widespread bankruptcies as what happened in 2008, the entire economy freezes because it runs on credit.