COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Newt Gingrich: ‘I Call On The President To Repudiate The Concept Of The 99 And The 1′

2012 GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich today, during an event in South Carolina, said that he repudiates the very idea behind the Occupy Wall Street movement — that the economy should work for everyone, not just the richest 1 percent — and called on President Obama to do the same:

I repudiate, and I call on the President to repudiate, the concept of the 99 and the 1. It is un-American, it is divisive, it is historically false…You are not going to get job creation when you engage in class warfare because you have to attack the very people you hope will create jobs.

http://youtu.be/OBz328IoSQ8

Gingrich may be spooked by the power of the narrative of the 99 percent, and is thus resorting to the tired charge of “class warfare” to deride anyone who points out the extent of income inequality in the U.S. But a recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found that “60 percent of respondents strongly agreed that America’s economic imbalance comes from policies that favor the rich over the rest of the country,” while 55 percent “said income inequality is a significant problem in the country.”