Rick Santelli Gets Credit for Tea Party Movement

It has been almost a year since CNBC reporter Rick Santelli’s Squawk Box rant against government debt and bailouts and his call for a new American tea party. Now, as the tea-party movement his comments sparked reaches into every political race in the nation, Santelli’s getting credit for his role. “I still think that all the dynamics that I felt as it was happening are still in place today,” says Santelli, who wants to add one new element: heavy-handed government reform of healthcare. While refusing to be a tea-party spokesman, Santelli is receiving much due in a recent book, A New American Tea Party. “Santelli was very important,” says author John O’Hara, a former Bushie. He tells Whispers that while most people just accepted the Bush and Obama administration laims that they had to bail out Wall Street and Detroit to avert catastrophic failures, “Santelli said what a lot of people were thinking and afraid to say” when he roared that “government is promoting bad behavior.”...read more