Biden reportedly calls tea party 'crazy'

COLUMBIA, S.C., Oct. 16 (UPI) -- Vice President Joe Biden is again making headlines for ignoring the careful lines of political correctness observed by other politicians.

At a closed-door meeting Tuesday with more than 100 black members of the clergy in South Carolina, Biden bluntly assessed the tea party wing of the GOP as "crazy."

"This is not your father's Republican Party," he said, according to a readout provided to CNN from someone who attended the meeting. "This is a different breed of cat, man. I am not making a moral judgment, but I will tell you that they have no judgment."

Last month, Biden was kinder, but still critical, in comments about the tea party.

"There are a lot of good people involved in the tea party, their objective is, they don't want government involved in anything," he said last month. "They're not liberal or conservative, they're anti-government, so their ends are met best when nothing happens, but you can not sustain a democracy without arriving at a consensus."

On Tuesday, Biden said a victory for Democrats would pay dividends not just for the party and for the country, but also for moderate Republicans who have found themselves overruled.

"If they win again, we are going to get no consensus on anything for the next two, four, six years," he said. "But if we beat some of these folks, it's going to give some spine to the Republicans who know better. If we win, will turn things around. There will begin to be consensus."

The vice president, who is openly considering a bid for president in 2016, made sure to boost his own bona fides among black voters, who make up most of South Carolina's Democrats.

As a young public defender in Delaware, Biden said he was "the only white boy on the east side of Wilmington" who "got 98 percent of the African-American vote every time I ran" in Delaware.