RICK SANTELLI 'Best 5 minutes of my life' (The Original Chicago Tea Party)
Chicago Sun-Times ^ | September 19, 2010 | ABDON M. PALLASCH Political Reporter apallasch@suntimes.com
Posted on Sunday, September 19, 2010 12:54:59 PM by Chi-townChief________________________
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As a staunch capitalist and social liberal, Rick Santelli might not agree with everything being said at Tea Party rallies or this weekend's Right Nation convention in Hoffman Estates, but he's proud of what he wrought.
"People ask me if I'm the father of the Tea Party movement," the CNBC commentator said outside the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. "I was the spark ...that started it. If being the lightning rod that started the Tea Party is what's written on my tombstone, I'll be very happy."
But after his five-minute "rant" on CNBC 1½ years ago suggesting a tea party in Lake Michigan against government spending, Santelli let go and never exercised any control over the movement.
"The five-minute rant was the best five minutes of my life," Santelli says. "But beyond that, really four minutes in time, it's the Tea Party. My wife pointed out to me, 'You were there for the insemination, but you were not there to raise the child.' "
Does Santelli think he created a "Frankenstein's monster" that is toppling establishment Republicans such as Delaware Rep. Mike Castle in favor of Tea Party insurgents such as Christine O'Donnell?
"No, I don't think so, but then again, how it develops from here...," Santelli said without finishing the sentence. "So far, this has been a very proud moment for America. Over time, it will get more organized and police itself -- that's the way we hope it turns out."
There's little doubt the Tea Party groups of America, which operate pretty independently, got their start from Santelli's rant on Feb. 19, 2009.
"Rick Santelli went on, and he expressed frustration at the government," Fox News commentator Glenn Beck -- the headliner at Saturday night's Right Nation event -- said on his show Wednesday. "We're rewarding what he called bad behavior [with] the mortgage bailout. He said there should be a Tea Party. Wow, he said a mouthful, because that's where it started."
Santelli is an unabashed promoter of the free market and critic of government bailouts. He rants a lot on the air, he said. But the day he slammed President Obama's plan to bail out people who couldn't pay their mortgages, he got national attention.
"How 'bout this president and administration? Why don't you put up a website to have people vote on the Internet in a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages?" Santelli bellowed on the floor of the Merc. "At least buy cars, buy houses in foreclosure, and give them to people who might have a chance to prosper ...and carry the water, not drink the water."
Turning to the traders around him, he raised his hands and called out -- like Peter Finch in the movie "Network" -- "This is America. How many of you people want to pay for your neighbors' mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills, raise your hand!"
The traders shouted their approval of his argument.
"President Obama, are you listening?" Santelli asked.
Backers of the bailouts criticized Santelli's rant as a rising up of the "haves" against the "have-nots," the finance people who created the mess not wanting to fix it.
"I think we left a few months ago the adage that 'If it was good for a derivatives trader, that it was good for Main Street,'" Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs sneered.
But Santelli said his is just "tough love" opposition to giving mortgages to people who can't afford them: "Owning a home should not be viewed as an entitlement," he said.
As Santelli stood in the middle of LaSalle Street outside the Board of Trade building Friday, traders saluted him, called him a hero, gave him the thumbs-up.
"You know, before the rant, I was really a lot more under the radar screen, but since Feb. 19, 2009, my daughters now hate to go out anywhere because, 'Dad, that guy is looking at you. He knows who you are!'"
Santelli lives with his wife and the two youngest of his three daughters in west suburban Wheaton. Yes, he confessed, he and his wife, Terri, have donned sunglasses and baseball caps to surreptitiously participate in Tea Party rallies near their home, not talking to anyone, not claiming any credit, just admiring democracy at work.
He has refused entreaties to run for office or endorse other candidates. He will not attend this weekend's Right Nation event.
Santelli, grandson of four Italian immigrants, was born near Taylor Street in the city's old Italian neighborhood. When he was 6, his father moved the family out to Lombard. Santelli's father was an electrical engineer and accomplished painter who studied at the Art Institute. Santelli says he's not a bad oil painter himself.
Santelli graduated from Willowbrook High School in Villa Park, then studied economics and pre-law at the University of Illinois in Champaign. After having lunch with a friend's father who traded pork bellies, Santelli signed up to be a runner for Shearson. He skipped law school and traded for 20 years, then went on-air for CNBC full-time in the '90s.
Does he see any problem injecting his own opinions into his broadcasts?
"I'm a capitalist," Santelli said. "I believe capitalism is the best system to allocate resources, to allocate jobs. I am prone to very passionate spots. I rant a lot. The markets to me are really very exciting, the greatest Rubik's Cube ever created by man."
Is there any part of the rant he'd take back?
"When I said 'losers,' that's the one thing sometimes I wish I could change," Santelli said. "But people misinterpret -- I wasn't saying, 'You're a loser.'
"I'm a market guy. Everything is a winner or a loser. I believe there's only one regulation in life that works: failure. We had 800 regulators on top of AIG. How did that work out? What keeps banks and entrepreneurs and capitalists from going too far is the fact that if they do, they may fail. If you take that away, you affect the whole system. I think that's what bugs me the most."
The New Yorker magazine offered evidence that the Tea Party movement has actually been funded and organized by corporate elites such as oilmen Charles and David Koch. But Santelli sees an organic, grass-roots movement akin to the Colonial-era tea party.
What advice does Santelli have for Tea Partiers and activists at Right Nation?
"Keep their strategies simple, keep their platforms short, keep focused, fiscal discipline, watch the spending, further the notion of individualism, they already have done that in my opinion."
