Pleading for money to help his party win back the House, Vice President Joseph Biden on Friday night took direct aim at tea party conservatives, calling them the biggest impediment to progress in America.
“Everything you worked for and the progress we have made is literally in jeopardy if we lose seats in the Senate and if we don’t gain seats in the House,” Mr. Biden told the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum, according to a pool reporter traveling with the vice president. “Don’t let anybody tell you we can’t win the House back … That’s the single most important thing, in my view, we can do for our collective agenda, is win back the House.”
He added that his one “crass plea” to the group is to raise more money for the upcoming 2014 congressional elections.
His comments, along with those of President Obama during the recent government shutdown and debt-ceiling debate, represent an increasing targeting by administration leaders of the tea party, its positions and its tactics.
Mr. Obama, for example, frequently blasted “one faction of one party” in the House as responsible for the shutdown that kept much of Washington closed for most of this month.
In his remarks Friday night, Mr. Biden said that tea party Republicans have a fundamentally different view about women and their role in the world.
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To advance the cause of women’s rights, he added, the U.S. must elect more Democrats.
“We can win back the House, and when we do, it’ll be your agenda, because the president and I embrace it completely,” Mr. Biden said.
About 120 guests attended Friday’s event at Washington’s Newseum.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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