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Watch your mouth, Mr. President! Writing in ABC's "Political Punch," Senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper reports that despite his campaign promise of a post-partisan era, even Barack Obama isn't above occasional name-calling. Reading through Jonathan Alter's new book on President Obama's first year, "The Promise: President Obama, Year One," Tapper comes across a November 30, 2009 interview in which Obama declared that the unanimous vote of House Republicans against the stimulus bills "set the tenor for the whole year ... That helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republicans." Obama's use of the term "tea-bagger," often deployed mockingly by news outlets, surprises Tapper. "Three days after he decried the lack of civility in American politics, President Obama is quoted in a new book about his presidency referring to the Tea Party movement using a derogatory term with sexual connotations," he reports.
Naturally, conservative pundits are irate. "Really. How many more selective civility police lectures can we take from this vulgarity-clogged White House?" writes Michelle Malkin. "Obama may be the most thin-skinned President we've ever had. It'll be funny to see him apologize for his crude, offensive, and juvenile language when this book officially comes out," declares Ian Lazaran at Conservatives 4 Palin.