Keller @ Large: Fact Checking Obama's Tea Party Encounter
BOSTON (CBS) - The president came to Iowa on what's been billed as a listening tour, and an encounter with two Tea Party activists made his famous campaign chat with Joe the plumber seem like a love fest.
That summit meeting with Joe now seems a relic of a gentler time, compared with this train wreck of a conversation.
"When you're talking about civility, how is your Vice President calling us terrorists," Ryan Rhodes said to the president. "I would like to understand that."
WBZ-TV's Jon Keller Is At Large
There's no proof Biden ever called the Tea Party "terrorists," although he was in the room when other Democrats did.
President Obama responded, "What he said was for us to be willing to take the economy to the brink was irresponsible."
What the president calls irresponsible, his critics see as hardball politics that paid off.
"That's the second person in your administration to call the right wing people terrorists," a woman with Rhodes said.
Homeland Security Chief Napolitano wants monitoring of right-wing extremists, but didn't use the "T" word.
Neither side is really listening to the other, or reaching for common ground. It's all hostility, defensiveness, and grievance-nursing. And that doesn't bode well for progress in Washington.
