Bill Clinton: “Everyone Should Hear” The “Real People Of The Tea Party Movement”

 by Colby Hall

If you need anymore evidence that the Tea Party movement is being being considered a more serious player in the shifting political landscape, I submit the following clip. While promoting the Clinton Global Initiative’s Annual Meeting this week, former President Bill Clinton shared his insights on the Tea Party with Willow Bay for Yahoo! News and Huffington Post, saying that the message if the Tea Party is something “everyone should hear.”


In a joint effort between Yahoo! News and Huffington Post, Bay posts a number of interview segments with the former president covering such topics as job growth, the economy and the role of the Clinton Global Initiative in the Middle East peace process.

But its his insight on the Tea Party movement, and its potential affect on the future of American politics (both near- and long-term) that is most interesting. Bay seemed to reference the recent Delaware Primary victory of Christine O’Donnell, asking what message Clinton takes away from a Tea Party primary victories over a GOP establishment-backed candidates. Clinton replied:

There are a lot of real people in this Tea Party movement that are saying something everyone should hear, which is “seems like everyone but average Americans are doing all right here. The people that caused the financial crisis are all back in great shape,” (and its true that the banks have 1.8 trillion dollars in uncommitted cash reserves.) “The government is in pretty good shape – the people who work for the government have good jobs, health care and can pay their mortgages and can send their kids to college. What about us?”
The problem is that if you look at the financial energy behind the Tea Party movement, its not about restricting abuse of big public and private power, its about destroying the role of government in our life so that private centers of power will be untrammeled, and I don’t think that’s good for average Americans.

Clinton follows up with political advice for the Democrats in the upcoming elections, effectively saying that a race between apathy and anger, apathy will always lose, which doesn’t portend for the Democratic party in the new few weeks, months and possibly years