“Sign me up for your Tea Party, patriots,” she said in a video message. “God bless you and keep up the great work!”

While Bachmann lent her full support for the movement, Republican Reps. Erik Paulsen and John Kline remained silent on the tea parties.

Local organizers decided to forgo speeches by elected officials but didn’t shun words of endorsement.

“Although we had many requests, we did not want any elected officials to speak at this event,” Tea Party organizer Margaret Lee said in a press release.

When Gov. Tim Pawlenty gave the RNC Weekly Republican Response last weekend, he didn’t mention the Tea Party to be held right outside his office a few days later. Other speculative Republican presidential nominees ran with the Tea Party cause, however, including Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who all showed up at their local gatherings.

Some elected officials were cautious about the Tea Party. “I’m just thinking what I should say because it can be used against me in a court of law,” Rep. Jim Abeler, R-Anoka, joked to the Star Tribune.

While Minnesota’s organizers left Republican leaders out the mix from the get-go, their presence at other rallies left a bad impression, the Washington Independent reports. Jason Pye, a libertarian organizer in Atlanta, Ga., was not pleased when Newt Gingrich became involved.

“Newt Gingrich enabled George W. Bush,” Pye told the Washington Independent. “He enabled the big spending. He lobbied conservative Republicans to compromise their principles and support Medicare Part D. He supported the bailout.”

In fact, a number of signs at the St. Paul rally served to remind tea party attendees that Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, “was right” and that mainstream Republicans were late to the party.

Bachmann’s message to Tea Party-goers:

“I want to be the president to appoint the justice that is the final vote we need to overturn Roe v. Wade and end this night of wrong,” said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., expressing a deep antipathy toward abortion that was shared by everyone on stage and many in the crowd.

“Life begins at conception,” echoed Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas.  Paul called on other candidates to support his “Sanctity of Life Act,” that which would strip federal courts of the right to review lawsuits related to reproductive health.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., pledged to appoint only anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court.  “If a judicial candidate can look at a sonogram of an unborn child and not see evidence of a valuable human life, I will not appoint him to the bench,” he said.

Read moreRep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., agreed with Hunter, saying, “All of us would appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade.”  He said when it came to appointing judges and justices, “There will be a litmus test.”

Businessman John Cox said that, “This issue tears this country apart, and it shouldn’t.”  He said he was staunchly against abortion and called for judges to “only interpret the law.”

Ambassador Alan Keyes, who ran unsuccessfully for Senate against Barack Obama in 2004, said he would “issue an executive order…to protect life in the womb.”  And he called on Republicans to support a right-to-life amendment to the Constitution, saying, “It’s simple, it’s clear, it must be done.”

Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas took a shot at the candidate who did not attend, saying, “It’s obvious that all of us on this stage are pro-life. I also think it’s obvious why there are four empty podiums here tonight.”

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson all declined to attend the debate.

Candidates expressed general opposition to family planning programs.  In a “lighning “lightning round” of questions, all candidates said they would defund Planned Parenthood and would allow federal funding to go only to organizations that “neither perform nor promote abortion.”  All candidates also expressed opposition to universal health care and supported a ban on federal funding of school programs that teach that homosexuality is normal. 

Candidates also were unanimous in their support of expanding abstinence-based education funding, and all expressed opposition to treaties, such as the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, that “could be used to support abortion as a human right.”