In yet another example of Republicans not understanding – or pretending not to understand – the struggles of the 99%, Newt Gingrich, the present leader among the Republicans trying to take on President Obama in 2012, blessed the American public, once again, with his expertise ignorance on the Occupy Wall Street protesters.
He starts off with a lie, which was expected… he is Newt Gingrich. “All the Occupying Movements starts out with a premise that we owe them everything,” he said. He paused, and when the expected barrage of applause from the right winged crowd didn’t massage his ego enough, Gingrich continued;
They take over a public park they didn’t pay for, they go nearby to use bathrooms they didn’t pay for, to beg for food from places they didn’t pay for, to obstruct those going to work to pay their taxes to sustain the bathrooms and to sustain the park, so they can self-righteously explain that they are the paragons of virtue to which we owe everything.
Now that is a pretty good symptom of how much the left have collapse as a moral system in this country, and why you need to reassert something as simple as saying to them, ‘go get a job, right after you take a bath.’
Hearing the last line got Gingrich the kind of applause he craved.
However, once again Newt, you’re wrong.
The 99% and the Occupiers are not concerned about what you have, nor do we want to take “everything” from you. What we do want is for you and your friends in the top 1% to stop taking everything from us. And over the last 30 years, since the Reagan Administration, taking from the poor to support the rich has been the Republicans’ modus operandi. It’s what they do.
And if Newt is correct in claiming that the Occupiers took over a public park “they didn’t pay for,” then exactly who pays for this public park if not the taxpayers, the same 99% he despises? Newt and his Republican friends are grossly mistaken in their assumption that the 99% are made up of dirty, uneducated and even unemployed people.
If Newt does become the Republican nominee, then he’d better keep in mind that the 99% are the ones who will be selecting the next president, and we’ll just assume he actually wants the presidency since he is campaigning. But knowing the character Newt is, we expect a flip-flop in the future. If he is the nominee, Gingrich will plead amnesia on this, and many other issues, that are getting him in hot, dirty water.