Waters: Tea Party can go 'straight to hell'

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) continued to make waves during the summer recess, telling a town-hall meeting that “the tea party can go straight to hell.”

“This is a tough game. You can't be intimidated. You can't be frightened. And as far as I'm concerned — the tea party can go straight to hell,” Waters said, according to Los Angeles television station KABC.

The remarks came at a “Kitchen Table Summit” in Inglewood Saturday night attended by more than a thousand people, on the heels of questions about unemployment and the economy. The congresswoman was arguing that Democrats needed to do more to advocate for job-creation programs — a theme she has been hammering of late.

Waters drew attention last week when she told a Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) town hall that while the black community continued to support President Obama, it was “getting tired.”

“We’re supportive of the president, but we getting tired, y’all. Getting tired,” Waters said.

“And so what we want to do is we want to give the president every opportunity to show, to show what he can do and what he’s prepared to lead on. We want to give him every opportunity, but our people are hurting. The unemployment is unconscionable. We don’t know what the strategy is.”

The congresswoman also was upset that the president did not visit black communities during his Midwest bus tour last week.

“We don't know why on this trip that he's in the United States now, he’s not in any black community. We don't know that,” Waters said.

Waters echoed her concerns about the combativeness of the Democratic Party later in the week at a CBC job fair in Atlanta.

“We were basically held up in raising the debt ceiling, until they got all of those budget cuts they demanded,” Waters told the Los Angeles Times. “We didn't raise any revenue and they didn't close any tax loopholes. I believe the Democratic Party and the president of the United States should not have backed down. We should have made them walk the plank.”

Waters’s remarks Saturday were not the only time she sparred with the Tea Party this week.

One week ago, Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) referred to her and other Democratic leaders as “overseers” on a “21st century plantation.” West went on to refer to himself as a “modern-day Harriet Tubman” who would lead voters to the Republican party.

Waters denounced West’s comments, calling them “a little bit ridiculous” and “hard to respond to” in an interview on MSNBC.

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