George Will Confronts MSNBC Analyst for Comparing Tea Party to Terrorists

We already brought you one clip of George Will form the ABC roundtable show "This Week," in which he heavily criticized S&P and their downgrade of the U.S. That was a good clip. But there's another clip from that program featuring Will that might cause some Tea Party conservatives to leap out of their seats and shout a hearty, Sunday-morning, "Hallelujah!"

Steve Rattner is a regular guest analyst on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and a former Obama adviser. Recently he labeled the Tea Party "economic terrorist" for not -- in his estimation -- playing fair during the debt ceiling negotiations. According to him, it was "unreasonable" for Tea Party congressman not to consider any tax increases, and it was wrong for them to threaten not to raise the debt limit unless such increases were taken off the table.

Host Christiane Amanpour brought up Rattner's comments, who then tried to explain them away. The moment was made awkward by the fact the Rep. Jason Chaffetz -- one such "terrorist" -- was on the show and sitting across from Rattner:

“I did say that [about] those who essentially were trying to hold up and bring the U.S. to the brink of default without being reasonable in their compromise . . . But you do have one group of people who are saying no tax increases, never, no how – when in fact the tax decreases under President Bush partly got us in this problem.”

That set of a spat between Rattner and Will, who went on to remind Rattner that he had also called Tea Partiers suicide bombers. Rattner denied that, but as Mediaite points out, "Rattner’s exact words were that members of the Tea Party were essentially strapping dynamite to their chest as a negotiation strategy." Semantics.*

As the debate continued, Will pulled out his ace in the hole. See, what Rattner failed to realize -- or realized but didn't want to admit -- is that there were actually more Democrats in the House that eventually voted against the compromise than Republicans. That point wasn't lost to Will:

“You do know that 95 House Democrats voted against raising the debt ceiling as compared to only 66 House Republicans. You do know that 26 Democratic Senators voted against raising the debt ceiling?”

Will makes a good point. But guess what? Amanpour quickly changed the subject, giving Rattner an out and shielding him from having to respond to the the point.

You can watch the lively discussion below:

*UPDATE:

NewsBusters has the audio of Rattner comparing the Tea Party to suicide bombers. Yes, he didn't say the word "suicide bombers," but he described them in graphic detail: