Ben Stein on Carville's Tea Party Remarks

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CHARLES OSGOOD: As we heard from Jeff Greenfield earlier, politics has become more rough and tumble in recent months and our contributor Ben Stein doesn’t appreciate some of what he’s been hearing.

BEN STEIN: I know James Carville and I like him. He and I have been on many talk shows together and he’s always friendly, funny, and knowledgeable. He’s also compelling, because he seems to me to reflect in his comments the thoughts of the inner circle to the Democratic Party’s power elite. That’s why I was a bit surprised when I read that Mr. Carville had recently blasted the men and women at the anti-Obama tea parties as so, quote, ‘classless,’ end quote, that they shocked him.

JAMES CARVILLE: I was shocked by how utterly classy – classless the crowd was.

STEIN: Wait a minute, I thought the Democrats were the party of the little guys and those who aren’t classy or well born. Now the Democrats’ political enemies are the ones without social class? So now the Democrats are admitting they’re the party of the rich? They’ve been getting the lion’s share of very large political gifts for years now. The truth is that the Democrats are the fat cats. I’m impressed that Mr. Carville admitted it. I like him more than ever now. I was also interested to see that Mr. Carville, a mere lad of 64, same age as I am, has made fun of the age of the tea party attendees. He mockingly noted that their average age was quote, ‘what like 72.4 years?,’ end quote.

CARVILLE: I mean they had every old crank in the country out there.

STEIN: So now the Democrats don’t think the opinions of senior citizens are worth anything more than ridicule? That’s a change too, and not a good one. I’ve seen other Democratic commentators making mock of the fact that the people at the tea parties were overwhelmingly white. So are we back to saying people’s political views only count if they have skin of a certain color? I don’t like the sound of that. There’s also some scorn because many of the tea party-ers are from small towns and I don’t like that much either. Look, some of what is coming out of the tea parties baffles me and I don’t care for it. But a lot of it does make sense. What’s really amazed me is how the elitist anger of the liberal Democrats is boiling over as some ordinary citizens show they don’t like being pushed around. The liberal Democrats might want to rethink this. Contempt for the ordinary citizen is just not American and it does not win elections.

OSGOOD: Commentary from Ben Stein.