This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," September 23, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Now for the top story tonight: a change in the Tea Party attacks. As you may know, the Tea Party was racist for about six months as the far left tried to demonize the movement. But now, things have changed. The Tea Party is simply crazy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS MATTHEWS, NBC NEWS: Do you think it would be smarter to say that the Tea Party people were somewhat deranged?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Harry Reid's opponent sounds like a mental patient.

MATTHEWS: You can't defend your screwball wing, can you?

CYNTHIA TUCKER, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: Some of the Tea Party candidates are so extreme.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: O'Donnell's comments are raising eyebrows and some concerns from the GOP establishment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE 2: The queen of the wing. It's crackpot of the first order.

JOY BEHAR, CO-HOST, "THE VIEW": I think it shows you how crazy the girl is, doesn't it?

ELISABETH HASSELBECK, CO-HOST, "THE VIEW": Why?

BEHAR: How many crazy people do we have to have in office?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'REILLY: All right. Joining us now to react and also to critique my interview last night with Jon Stewart, Fox News analyst Laura Ingraham, author of the big best-seller, "The Obama Diaries."

OK, so I guess they're not racist anymore. The Tea Party folks, they're now crazy or maybe they're crazy racists. What do you think?

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Bill, they also don't like baby seals, OK?

O'REILLY: Baby seals.

(LAUGHTER)

INGRAHAM: Baby seals are really bad, OK? It's a bad situation. Here's what I say to all the liberals and other cable channels that nobody watches. What's crazier: stating that you think the government is too big and needs to be dismantled, maybe a little too enthusiastically with a baseball bat, is that crazy? Or is it crazy to say that the stimulus actually created the millions of jobs that we were promised it was going to create? Or is it crazy to say that, "Hmm, cap-and-trade is going to help our economy or that Obamacare is going to bring down our insurance rates?

You see, because, Bill, for most people, what the establishment mostly on the left have promised, that stuff seems crazy to most people who are more in line with a lot of the Tea Party views than frankly, you know, they're in line with the establishment left-wingers. So, it is…

O'REILLY: OK. Well, here's what I don't get.

INGRAHAM: The critique doesn't work.

O'REILLY: After a year of the Tea Party being prominent in the political discussion, it's there. It's there. It's not going to go away.

INGRAHAM: Right.

O'REILLY: It's established itself as a force in the upcoming election. So what good does it do for all of these politicians and pundits to go on national television and insult all of these people? First, they're racist. Now, they're crazy.

INGRAHAM: Right.

O'REILLY: What good does that do? I'm not -- I'm not getting it.

INGRAHAM: I think it's, you know, spinning the plate on the -- on the stick. It's like, look at this, look at this. In that way, you don't really have to defend your own record. You don't really have to get engaged in the substantive argument about whether cap-and-trade is actually going to cripple American business globally or is it going to be some engine of economic growth in our country. So, these guys are crazy. You can't follow the crazy people. You've got to follow us. You know, we're pulling ourselves out of the ditch slowly but surely. I don't think it's going to work but as you and I talked about before, Bill, what else are they going to run on, the economy?

O'REILLY: Well, that's what Morris says, they have no message and -- you know?

INGRAHAM: Yes.

O'REILLY: Look, if you take ideology out of it and just be practical. I'll tell you that I know small business and this came out today as report today. Small business basically says, "Look, we're not going to hire anybody, because we can't pay the higher insurance rate"…

INGRAHAM: Can't do it.

O'REILLY: …for the next four years. We can't pay the premiums, so we're not going to hire anybody." So, you're sitting around, you're going, this isn't ideological.

(LAUGHTER)

INGRAHAM: And Bill, what I see…

O'REILLY: It's basically business.

INGRAHAM: No, you're right.