Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and possible presidential candidate Sarah Palin lambasted Vice President Joe Biden Monday night for negative comments he allegedly made about the Tea Party.
Biden was reported by Politico on Monday to have agreed with an argument by Rep. Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania, who apparently asserted that “[w]e have negotiated with terrorists” during a closed-door meeting with House Democrats about the deal to raise the debt limit.
“They have acted like terrorists,” Biden was said to have responded.
The Hill reports that in an e-mail Monday night, Bachmann, R-Minn., condemned Biden’s alleged statement and called on the vice president to apologize.
“Only in the bizarro world of Washington is fiscal responsibility sometimes defined as terrorism,” wrote the Tea Party favorite, according to the Hill.
And in a Monday night appearance on Fox News, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said it was “vile” to use the word terrorist in reference to politicians who were “taking a stand.”
“We’re getting kind of used to being called names. You know, racists and inciters of violence, and being accused with things we have nothing to do with,” Palin told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “But I suppose it’s a bit more appalling to have been called acting like terrorists today from he who is in second in command of the most powerful office in the world. It’s quite appalling and cert proves how out of touch this White House is what it comes to realizing what the silent majority of Americans are seeing and feeling.”
“What we’re feeling is that growing more debt isn’t going to get us out of debt and raising taxes in a down economy is a bad idea, and we’re taking a stand in light of those,” she continued. “And so to be called a terrorist because of our beliefs from the vice president, it’s quite appalling. It’s quite vile.”
In a Monday interview with CBS News’ Scott Pelley, however, Biden denied the allegations that he compared Tea Party members to terrorists.
“I did not use the terrorism word,” he said.
A spokesperson for Biden added on Tuesday that Biden “does not believe it’s an appropriate term in political discourse.”
“The word was used by several members of Congress,” said Biden spokesperson Kendra Barkoff. “The vice president does not believe it’s an appropriate term in political discourse.”
Biden told Pelley he let lawmakers “vent” about the deal, which the House passed Monday night and which will head to the Senate today. But he says he did not agree with the terrorism comparison.
“What happened was there were some people who said they felt like they were being held hostage by terrorists,” he said. “I never said that they were terrorists or weren’t terrorists, I just let them vent.”
“I said even if that were the case, what’s been happening when you now have taken and paid the debt and move that down so we can now discuss, the nuclear weapon’s been taken out of anyone’s hands,” he added.
{CBS News.com/Matzav.com Newscenter}
who gives? why does every idiotic thing get overblown like this?
Biden’s response is shades of Weiner
Wait…
Is this the same Sarah Palin who not only had issued a map with crosshairs on various Democratic districts, including that of Giffords…
And who not only tweeted, at the time, “Dont Retreat-RELOAD!”…
And who then not only went-on to defend such incendiary comments but also to attack and accuse those who condemned them of engaging in a “blood libel” against her?
So, let me see if I have this straight: The same Sarah Palin who argued that people should have realized that her incendiary use of specific shooting terminology was purely figurative and metaphorical, and accused those who condemned it as going over-the-line of shamelessly politcizing the tragedy…
The same Sarah Palin is now crying foul over the Vice President saying that the Tea Party Republicans figuratively, metaphorically “acted like territorists”.
Incredible.
“Fiscal responsibility”, aye?
Funded and controlled by corporate lobbyists, the Tea Party is an opportunistic, faux populist movement. “Astroturf”. Through demagoguery and disinformation, the Tea Party exploits the very real and legitimate grievances of so many Americans.
The Tea Party, in taking the fanatic positions that they have, have been the “bad cop” that has allowed establishment Republicans such as Boehner to play the role of “good cop”. Thus Boehner & Co. are able to take positions that although quite unreasonable, illogical, unjust and immoral in their own right, nonetheless appear moderate and reasonable by contrast.
– Economist Michael Hudson, on Democracy Now! July 22nd
Full-transcript and audio at
[http://]www.democracynow.org/2011/7/22/pushing_crisis_gop_cries_wolf_on
– Economist Richard Wolff, Democracy Now!, July 28th
[http://]www.democracynow.org/2011/7/28/richard_wolff_debt_showdown_is_political
“Trickle-down”, “supply-side” economics was rightly called “voodoo economics” by George H.W. Bush, before he conveniently reversed himself upon being chosen as the running mate of Ronald Reagan, the Canonized One. (Those who can handle having an icon of theirs deflated might be interested in a book called Tear Down This Myth that deconstructs the mythology surrounding Reagan)