Santorum: Pawlenty engaging in ‘class warfare’
Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 11:08 am
- 5 Comments
Recent statements by Gov. Tim Pawlenty criticizing “country-club elitists” are an example of “class-warfare rhetoric,” former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said Tuesday in an interview with the National Review.
The two Republicans are both openly mulling a run for president in 2012, and both will be in Iowa in the coming weeks: Pawlenty will hold several events in eastern Iowa this weekend, and Santorum will make his fifth trip to the Hawkeye State next month.
Pawlenty was talking to a breakfast gathering in Washington, D.C., hosted by the Christian Science Monitor on Monday when he said he was the one person who could dispel the impression that Republicans are “a bunch of country club elitists.” He pointed to his his blue-collar upbringing in south St. Paul as proof.
Santorum dismissed the statements by his potential rival.
“I’m not a class-warfare guy,” Santorum tells National Review Online in reaction to Pawlenty’s remarks. “That’s the Democrats’ gig. They like to divide and play the class card. We don’t have classes in America — I don’t even like the term ‘middle class.’ People are lower income or middle income, and the dynamism of this country is that you can rise, and sometimes fall, but you are not stuck in classes. We should not get into that kind of rhetoric, or showing some sort of prejudice.”
5 Comments
Comment posted July 29, 2010 @ 11:48 am
Gotta agree with Rick. Pawlenty’s also the guy who coined the term “Walmart republicans” for the same reason. It’s a sore spot with him. Given his upbringing, he resents the false notion that the republican party is called the party of the rich. The only really rich people I know personally vote democrat and all the republicans I know are “middle income.”
Look at the governor’s race. The two rich guys in the race are the democrats. Of course, it’s instructive that neither of them actually earned their wealth.
Comment posted July 29, 2010 @ 12:04 pm
Can’t help but notice he says “People are lower income or middle income,” and doesn’t have a third group for UPPER. So if you make >$200 million a year, you’re still “middle income,” I guess.
Comment posted July 29, 2010 @ 12:34 pm
Dunno. Mr. Pawlenty wants to cut compensation for middle class workers who are federal employees. He may have blue collar roots, but he acts the country club Republican when he goes after the middle class, while ignoring the excesses of Wall Street billionaires.
I guess you have to be an actual country club Republican, like Santorum, to see even a dime’s worth of difference between himself and Mr. Pawlenty.
Comment posted July 29, 2010 @ 4:22 pm
at the very least Mr. Pawlenty has the understanding that you can’t spend what you don’t have, somehting both our state and federal govenrment needs to deal with. Look out people of minnesota lower income, mid income or top income they are comming for MORE tax dollars to support themselves and the sweet deals for those employed there. While the rest of us are stuck supporting it in a worhtless economy….
Comment posted July 31, 2010 @ 1:03 pm
Pawlenty has been preparing his run for President for three years now, and has a Rolodex full of fair-weather friends and 3% support to show for it.
Santorum is working right out of the GOP playbook:
Deny the problem exists. You cannot talk about class warfare if there are no classes.
Blame someone else. Democrats first, but other republicans are fair game if they get in the way. Very post-Reagan.
It doesn’t solve any real problems, it usually creates them. But it does win elections.
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