Rick Santelli Fired Up: ‘If It Wasn’t for the Tea Party We’d Be Rated Triple-B’

Rick Santelli -- the man whose speech on stimulus and bailouts in February 2009 is credited with helping launch the Tea Party -- was fired up in this morning about the lack of leadership in the White House and all the political wrangling around what is really a simple problem- the government spends too much money.

During the CNBC segment, Santelli ripped into the "blame Bush, blame the sun" culture currently on display in the White House. He said it's clear "we all know deep inside no country is the same it was five years ago," and as for stocks going down, "we're already Ralph Cramden on thin ice, now an infant's jumped onto our shoulders."

More than anything else, Santelli was livid about the political accusations that the Tea Party is to blame for the U.S. credit downgrade. Quite to the Contrary, Santelli said, "If it wasn't for the Tea Party, we'd have been rated triple B."

The Santelli portion starts around 3:10 into the clip below, courtesy of CNBC:

(h/t trending right)