Suppose the Tea Party was black, Mr. Clinton? Just asking. — Ed.
Liberal Democrats and their friends in the media have tried just about everything to dismiss and discredit the tea-party movement. They’ve accused Americans who are anxious and angry about a rapidly encroaching government of being racists, extremists, birthers, pawns of a corporate “AstroTurf” effort—and, now, potential Timothy McVeighs.
No less a figure than Bill Clinton seized on the occasion of the Oklahoma City bombing’s 15th anniversary to lecture tea-party activists, first in a speech last week to the Center for American Progress Action Fund, then in a Monday New York Times op-ed. “Have at it, go fight, go do whatever you want,” he said in the speech. “You don’t have to be nice; you can be harsh. But you’ve got to be very careful not to advocate violence or cross the line.” In the op-ed, he wrote: “There is a big difference between criticizing a policy or a politician and demonizing the government.”
Taken strictly at face value, these statements are unobjectionable. Yet given that the tea-party movement has been peaceful and law-abiding, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Mr. Clinton is engaging in a not-so-subtle smear campaign.
In doing so, Mr. Clinton is taking a page out of his own Presidential playbook. Five days after the 1995 bombing, he delivered a speech in which he denounced “purveyors of hatred and division.” He said, “They leave the impression that, by their very words, that violence is acceptable. . . . When they say things that are irresponsible, that may have egregious consequences, we must call them on it.” A news report at the time noted that Mr. Clinton made these incendiary accusations while “never putting a noun to the pronoun.”
Mr. Clinton’s opposition to “demonizing the government” would be more credible had he been heard from on the subject during the first eight years after he left office—when, for example, Hollywood demonized George W. Bush by releasing “Fahrenheit 9/11,” or when Mr. Clinton’s own former Vice President railed against the man who beat him in 2000: “He betrayed this country!”
Instead, Mr. Clinton’s effort to exploit the memory of Oklahoma City looks like a partisan cheap shot. In his speech last week, the former President observed that, unlike the Boston Tea Party, “this fight is about taxation by duly, honestly elected representatives that you don’t happen to agree with, that you can vote out at the next election.” Our guess is that the next election is what he’s really afraid of. Source