Team Building Quote by Matt Shea

The line tries to launder an ideological hard edge through the language of pragmatism. Calling some Democrats “actually Tea Partiers” is less an observation than a recruitment pitch: it reframes the Tea Party not as a partisan faction but as a temperament supposedly hiding inside the other team. The word “actually” does heavy lifting, implying that party labels are cosmetic and that “real” political identity is rooted in a shared grievance or a shared enemy (establishment leadership, federal power, cultural elites). It’s an invitation to defect without the stigma of defection.

Then comes the soft-focus promise: “We need to build coalitions with them”. Coalition-building sounds civic-minded, but here it functions as a tactical bridge between populist movements that thrive on purity tests and the messy arithmetic of governing. The subtext is transactional: find the Democrats who can be peeled away on taxes, guns, immigration, or anti-government sentiment, and treat them as temporary allies to advance a broader agenda. It also signals to Shea’s base that collaboration isn’t capitulation if the collaborators are “really” one of us.

Contextually, this kind of rhetoric tends to surface when movements hit a ceiling. If your brand is insurgency, you either broaden the tent or stay a protest. So the quote sketches a path to power that preserves the thrill of insurgent identity: you’re not moderating; you’re revealing hidden converts and assembling a cross-party bloc against a common target.