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Bill Clinton became the latest Democrat to weigh in on the Tea Party in an interview on Face the Nation today.
From The Hill
Former President Bill Clinton said Sunday that the Tea Party movement “reflects the feeling of a lot of Americans that they’re getting the shaft,” but isn’t clear what it stands for.
On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Clinton said many Americans were bitter that banks and other “people who caused these problems” had recovered while ordinary people had not.
“There is a general revolt against bigness,” he said.
Clinton said that in the Republican Party, this translates to an insurrection against big government instead of big business. He questioned, though, if the Tea Party wanted to roll back initiatives such as healthcare reform, Wall Street oversight reform and student-loan reform.
“I don’t know where they stand but I get why they’re popular,” the former president said.
Clinton said on NBC’s Meet the Press that a lot of the voters who chose Tea Party candidates have “good impulses” because “ordinary people” have not “done well.” But he said it is not clear where the Tea Party candidates stand on “specifics.”
If Clinton doesn’t know what specifically the Tea Party stands for then he hasn’t really been paying attention. It’s not about bigness as he put it but about the federal government’s reckless spending, exploding deficits, higher taxes, government run health care and so on.
Even if Clinton has missed the central points of the movement at least he appears to be trying to understand what is happening rather than directly attacking the movement as DNCC Chairman Tim Kaine did when he equated the Tea Party to a bunch of cannibals.
The mainstream media has been covering this story for more than a year now and by and large they have very few good things to say about the movement labeling them “insurgents”, “wackos” or worse in an attempt to defuse a movement that has turned conventional political wisdom on its head.
But try as they might to derail the Tea Party, candidates backed by the movement continue to win stunning the establishment and changing the political landscape for years to come.
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About the author
Don Irvine is Chairman of Accuracy in Media. He is active on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow him @donirvine to read his latest thoughts.
6 Comments for Bill Clinton Gets the Tea Party
mr. clinton,
what you don’t get is that we’re fed up with politics as usual, we’re tired of the arrogance of the self annointed “elites” in washington, and their hordes of equally arrogant bureaucrats that harrass us with their dictates daily. we’re sick of ever increasing taxes on our wages and a tax code that no one, even those who administer it, can understand. we’ve had it with politicians who no longer even bother to hide their shady and crooked dealings, and we are outraged at a national debt increasing by leaps and bounds, billions a day, that even our great grand children will be struggling to pay. you and your ilk have run our nation nearly into the ground and we will take it back and restore it to its greatness, under our constitution and our laws if we must grind you into the dust under our boots to do it.
further mr. clinton,
we have come before you in peaceable assembly, to petition for redress of grievances, as is our right under our constitution and laws. you want to hear us, or some day we will come with torches, pitchforks, barrels of tar, sacks of feathers and fence rails to settle accounts in the custom of our ancestors.
Thank you AIM & Mr. Irvine for all you do and also for enabling commenting on this site. Part of my scanning to gauge the mindset of the voting public and the American culture is to sample the responses to writings in a variety of publications daily . As an example of the vast popularity of Tea Party Principles & mindset just take a look at the responses to articles in publications such as the NY Daily News. NYDN responses have flipped from 80-90% pro Left to 80-90% anti Left/Big Guv writings over the last 6 months or so!
Bubba Clinton and The Left know what they face but must try to maintain the impression that the TP is radical in order to continue hey continue their failing attempt to marginalize this majority of the US population. This is not a winning strategy for the “Party of the Small People”. The Left is looking at many years in the wilderness and possibly death.
So what else will slick willie say to make up for his own rotten presidency including CHINAGATE and his being a rapists and being the co-president uner hillary
Admitting that he understands too much, Clinton would undermine Obama with the facts.
So , billy boy don’t understand..well just goes to show you they don’t listen. and calling us ordinary people like their way up there. fall for that and you will fall for anyone and anything, another reason the country is falling !! I was sitting here thinking how the left was s egnorant and how nice it will be for all the left and some of the right that bash the TEA PARTY because those who do is the very ONES we won’t be voting for.!! how easy is that