DeMint: Wish I'd thought of 'You lie!'
My colleague Kenneth Vogel writes in from tonight's gathering of tea party activists in Washington for the premiere of a documentary about the movement:
After seeing Rep. Joe Wilson raise more than $1 million inthe days following his "You lie!" outburst during President Obama's September address to Congress, Sen. Jim DeMint, a fellow South Carolina Republican, said he wished he'd been the one who lashed out.And this:
Though Wilson apologized for the comment, he was pilloried by the left and lionized by Republican activists in the so-called Tea Party movement.
DeMint – who himself raised hackles on the left and in the White House, for predicting that Democratic efforts to reform healthcare will be Obama’s “Waterloo” and would “break him” – said Wednesday night that his first instinct after hearing Wilson’s outburst a couple months later was self-preservation.
“When I heard this ‘you lie’ comment, the President turned and looked at me and I said ‘Oh no, they think it’s me,’” DeMint told the crowd. When he learned it was Wilson, DeMint said he immediately became concerned that his friend could face a firestorm of criticism that could threaten him politically.
But, DeMint said, “a couple days later, after he raised a few million dollars off of it, I was thinking ‘why didn’t I say that?’”
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a darling of the Tea Party crowd, credited that movement with blocking Democratic health care reform efforts and predicted the conservative activists behind the movement could ultimately thwart the passage of that bill and others..
"The only reason we don't have national health care right now is you - is the people outside of Washington," DeMint told a gathering of Tea Party activists gathered Wednesday night in Washington for the premiere of a documentary about the movement.
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