You know the world is getting crazy when a former Democratic President from the South comes to the defense of a Republican Governor from the Northeast. To President Bill Clinton’s great credit, he recently commented about how alarming some of the hate speech is that is coming out of the teachers’ union in New Jersey. On this past Sunday’s “This Week” show on ABC, President Clinton said the following:
And the only point I tried to make was that we ought to have a lot of political dissent — a lot of political argument. Nobody is right all the time. But we also have to take responsibility for the possible consequences of what we say. And we shouldn’t demonize the government or its public employees or its elected officials. We can disagree with them. We can harshly criticize them.
But when we turn them into an object of demonization, you know, you — you increase the number of threats.
But I worry about these threats against the president and the Congress. And I worry about more careless language even against — some of which we’ve seen against the Republican governor in New Jersey, Governor Christie.
Now you can add President Clinton to the long list of people who are growing tired of the end-of-the-world rhetoric and hate mongering that is coming out of the New Jersey Education Association and some of its affiliated local unions. It’s such a damn shame that political discussions in New Jersey come down to end-of-the-world scenarios. New Jersey is the epitome of how partisan politics can fracture a state. However, if anyone can fix this mess, it’s Chris Christie. Governor Christie is one of few politicians out there who bucks the trend of playing to the public opinion polls. And watch – once Governor Christie wins this battle against the NJEA and their hate speech, his numbers will go right back up.
Anyway, here is the actual video of President Clinton’s comment:
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