Palin: GOP will unite behind Tea Party

RENO, Nev., Oct. 19 (UPI) -- Sarah Palin, whose support helped many U.S. Tea Party candidates win Republican primaries this year, expects the "machine" to adopt the movement's beliefs.

Palin hit California during the weekend, where Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, the Republican candidates for governor and U.S. senator stayed away from her. On Monday, she was in Nevada for a Tea Party Express bus tour in Reno.

"I think the machine within the GOP is going to understand realize that this 'We the People' message is rising and is resonating throughout with independents, with hard-core conservatives, with moderates, because it's so full of common sense and time-tested truths that could put the economy back on the right track," Palin told CNN. "Heaven forbid the GOP machine strays from this message. If so, the GOP is through."

Many of the candidates Palin backed defeated candidates endorsed by the Republican establishment and even Republican incumbents. But she said the Tea Party is not a divisive movement.

"Send a new Congress to D.C. to apply those solutions that are based just on free-market principles that really can't be argued then by the independents and by the moderates," she said. "Then they start embracing more of what the party's all about."