Tea Party Elected Jimmy Carter

so says Jimmy Carter.

From Andy Barr of Politico today:

Jimmy Carter says he was elected president in 1976 by many of the same elements that fuel the new tea party movement.

“I don’t have any criticism of the members of the tea party,” the former Democratic president said Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.”

Carter then claimed “a lot of those same people, 30 years ago, were the ones who put me in the White House.”

He distinguished, however, between the grassroots activists that he says helped elect him and the tea party, by arguing that the current crop “doesn't realize that they are financed by oligarchs, in the oil industry primarily.”

Carter also predicted that Democrats were sure to lose the House in Tuesday’s midterm elections.

“That's almost a foregone conclusion,” he said.

But, he said, he hopes Republicans won’t be able to take control of the Senate, too, adding “I don’t think they will.”

That's an interesting turnaround coming from Carter, who called the very "tea party" people who descended in Washington DC in September 2009 "racists" for opposing America's first black president.

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