Rep. McCotter calls for a truce between Republicans, Tea Party

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.), a Republican presidential candidate, called Saturday morning for Republicans and the Tea Party to stop fighting and work together to help save the country, presumably from Democratic policies, although he was not specific.

“On the right, take note,” McCotter said on the House floor. “It is as unwarranted and injurious for a Republican to call a Tea Partier a hobbit as it is for a Tea Partier to call a Republican a RINO.”

McCotter was referring to a comment earlier this month from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who compared Tea Partiers to hobbits. That sparked rebukes from Tea Party sympathizers, including from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and other Tea Party favorites. The derisive term “RINO” is an acronym for “Republican in name only.”

Paul was quoted in the press saying he’d rather be a hobbit than a troll because “the hobbits were heroes” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series.

“We cannot unite America if we divide the movement,” McCotter warned. “Consequently, the time has come for the Tea party to grow up and the Republican Party to wake up and come together to serve and save this great nation.”