Bill Clinton, campaigning for Martha Coakley: "You need to take back this tea party idea"

Friday, Jan 15, 2010 18:16 EST
Joe Conason
Clinton: Take back the Tea Party!
Stumping for Martha Coakley, the former president urges Bay State Democrats to fight GOP "abusers of power"
By Joe Conason

http://www.salon.com/news/martha_coakley/index.html?story=/opinion/conason/2010/01/15/clinton_coakley



Former President Bill Clinton, left, addresses an audience as Martha Coakley looks on during a campaign rally in Boston, Friday, Jan. 15, 2010.

When Bill Clinton flew up to Massachusetts on Friday afternoon to campaign with Martha Coakley, he brought a special message for Bay State Democrats facing the enraged right-wing activists mobilized around her opponent Scott Brown.

“You need to take back this tea party idea,” he told the wildly cheering crowds in Boston and later in Worcester. “They say that the original Boston Tea Party was anti-government, but that is wrong. The Massachusetts Bay Colony had a strong government. They weren’t liberal or conservative, they were communitarians, which means they knew we’re all in this together. What they opposed was the abuse of power.” But the aim of the Republican Party and Senate nominee Brown, he charged, is to “protect the modern abusers of power” – namely, the corporate and financial leaders whose depredations can only be curtailed by strong, responsive government.

Coakley echoed Clinton’s populist theme, accusing Brown of wanting to spare the nation’s largest banks from paying back the billions of federal bailout dollars – even while the bankers paid themselves “seven or eight-figure bonuses.” The rich and well-connected “will always be able to hire someone to speak for them. But who is going to speak for the rest of us? That is why I’m running for the Senate.”

Confessing that she wasn’t sure anyone “could fill the shoes” of the late Senator Ted Kennedy -- whose seat she and Brown are contesting in Tuesday’s special election -- Coakley said that would be her goal. “Ted Kennedy stood for the poor, the elderly, the young, the disabled,” she recalled. “Scott Brown has no interest in doing that.”