"Yeah, I’m perfectly aware that a bunch of crazy ragheads want to fly airliners into our office buildings, but they don’t live here, and they are not the spiritual heart of the Tea Party."
Spiritual heart?
This idea that the Tea Party is a bunch of bible thumping idiots is just another meme like Republicans are racists. It's something that some people cling to in order to put the opposition in a box labled 'bad' and put the box on a shelf. "It's the price the Tea Party pay's for having an impact."
I won't bore you with studies and statistics but there's a big difference between "evangelicals" and the "born-again" within the Tea Party and it's relected in the way they vote. The one's that are making your "skin crawl" are a minority in the group.