In an interview later, he also said he would not vote to raise the debt ceiling, no matter the economic consequences. “Where does the insanity stop?” he asked. “We have got to cut spending and live within our means.”

Mr. Hice’s positions add up to a larger view of the country he would like to see, which he painted for constituents in Flovilla, Ga., where he met with wounded veterans.

“Our constitutional principles, freedom and liberty, respect, tolerance for one another,” Mr. Hice said, “but where we have a government of the people, for the people, where government is limited in its intrusiveness in our lives, and freedom is able to flourish and businesses are able to do what they do without being suffocated through regulations and taxation — the America that you and I grew up in.”

— David M. Herszenhorn

A Disdain for ‘Genuflecting’: David Schweikert

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The Tea Party Scottsdale meeting began with a prayer intoned by the group’s secretary, Sunny Forrest-Brown, to about 30 people gathered before an American flag — hands clasped, heads bowed. “Confer wisdom on our lawmakers that they remember their duties to everyday citizens like us as they push for the changes necessary to protect our freedoms,” she said.

Her words resonated with Dan Farley, a real estate broker and organic farmer, who heartily agreed. “The decisions on the federal level just don’t represent the will of the people,” he said. And with Jay Lawrence, a longtime radio talk show host serving his first term as state representative, who said that he kept his focus on his district and that there was “no point worrying about what happens in Washington.”