The Occupy Wall Street protestors should be protesting against President Barack Obama, not Republicans, because both protestors and Republicans agree that Obama’s policies have made the nation’s economy worse, said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.
“We agree … that this president is an absolute failure — he has put our country and economy into the ditch — [so] I guess there might be a few things we agree on,” Priebus said during a Monday morning press conference.
When he was elected, Obama has 80 percent approval, a massive majority in the House and nearly a supermajority in the Senate, Priebus said. “Every single thing these protestors are worried about, the president could have done something about,” he said.
The Occupy protests are dominated by progressive activists who say they represent the increasing fears of ordinary Americans who have seen their economic prospects — and those of their children — decline. National unemployment and underemployment is roughly 16 percent, federal deficit spending reached $1.3 trillion in 2011 — or nearly 9 percent of the nation’s annual income — and the public’s confidence in the future has lurched downwards.
Tea Party protestors, and most GOP legislators, say Obama’s progressive policies have constricted the market’s ability to expand the economy. Obama “failed all of those people who are protesting down on Wall Street,” Priebus said.
Other Republicans, however, were not so charitable towards the progressive protestors.
The New York protest site “is disgusting and it is despicable,” said Virginia GOP Chairman Pat Mullins, who visited the site on Sunday. “I was disgusted by the way they were laying on the American flag, wiping their boots on the flag … you’ve got to wonder why any leader of the free world would condone this,” he said during the press conference. Their behavior, he added, is also costing the local police $120,000 a day.
The president encouraged this behavior in his speech at the dedication of a national memorial to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., said Mullins. “The president was on TV saying Martin Luther King would condone the type of violence going on there right now… [and] the general feeling is that the president has encouraged this by the way he has run his campaign — divide, divide divide.”
Obama is “trying to turn and divide the country” by directing protests against Wall Street, even as “he’s vacuuming money out of Wall Street like nobody’s business,” said North Carolina GOP Chairman Robin Hayes.