Former President Bill Clinton’s comments surrounding the Oklahoma City bombing commemoration are “unconscionable” and an “over-the-top” effort to silence critics, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said Tuesday.

By DAVID MARK at POLITICO

Former President Bill Clinton’s comments surrounding the Oklahoma City bombing commemoration are “unconscionable” and an “over-the-top” effort to silence critics, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said Tuesday.

Clinton has drawn fire for reprising criticism he made of conservative talk radio 15 years in the wake of the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building that took 168 lives and injured more than 500 others.

“I could not believe it when I first saw the Clinton remarks that he had come out again, 15 years later, and talked about this being precipitated by right wing talk radio,” Inhofe said in an interview for POLITICO’s Arena forum. “This is an over-the-top effort to try to stop a movement of people who aren’t amenable to supporting Obama programs, like cap and trade, government-run health care and closing Gitmo.”

Clinton’s remarks have fostered a spirited back and forth about the role of increasingly heated political rhetoric by tea party protesters and others.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), for instance, warned the former president not to “cheapen” the memory of the Oklahoma City bombing by comparing the anti-government sentiment that fueled it to the anti-Washington anger that drives the tea party movement. But former Rep. Mickey Edwards, an Oklahoma Republican who represented the Oklahoma City area from 1977-1993, said in Arena that Clinton’s remarks were taken out of context and were actually more nuanced.

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