Colin Powell: Tea Party Candidates Can't Win

But Dems, GOP also too partisan, he tells Christiane Amanpour
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 27, 2011 1:32 PM CST
Colin Powell: Tea Party Candidates Too Partisan to Win Presidential Election
Former United States Secretary Of State, Colin Powell walks into the International Rescue Committee's Annual Freedom Award benefit at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on November 9, 2011, in New York City.   (Getty Images)

Colin Powell took aim at Tea Party candidates, Democrats, and Republicans alike today in a plea for compromise on Capitol Hill. Speaking on Christiane Amanpour, the former Bush secretary of state said Tea Party contenders are too hard-line to win next year's presidential election: "The Tea Party point of view of 'no compromise whatsoever' is not a point of view that will eventually produce a presidential candidate who will win." But he insisted that today's no-compromise Congress isn't much better.

Calling the mood on Capitol Hill "very tense," he noted that "we have a Congress now that can't even pass an appropriations bill." He didn't discuss the latest example of partisan extremism—the scrapped deficit-cutting super committee—but he did urge politicians and media to return to the political center, the Hill reports. "The media loves this game where everybody's on the extreme," he said. "We have to take some of the heat out of our political life in terms of the coverage of it." (In other bipartisan news, Bill Clinton tips his hat to New Gingrich, and Chuck Schumer predicts a big budget deal.)

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