Santorum: Obama's Class-Warfare Rhetoric Spawned Occupy Wall Street

Presidential contender Rick Santorum says it can be argued class-warfare rhetoric that President Barack Obama has been “spewing” throughout the country spawned the Occupy Wall Street movement. The former Pennsylvania senator also told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren Obama himself was responsible for bailing out a floundering Wall Street in the first place.
 

“Well, I think this is — we’ve seen this before, Greta — I mean, this is a group of the radical left, and the labor unions, and the progressive movement in this country trying to do what they always do, which is use protests,” Santorum said. “It was anti-war protests, it’s environmental protests, now it’s Wall Street protests. It’s the same old: We need more government, we need to constrain business, we need to shut down the profits, and we need to confiscate wealth and redistribute it. That’s their agenda.

Van Susteren asked Santorum what he would say to the protesters if he was president.

“Well, you tell them that the answer to the problem is not government confiscation,” Santorum said. “The president of the United States — well, you know, the previous president, hopefully, if I’m president now — the previous president is the one that voted for the Wall Street bailouts, is the one that [signed] the Dodd-Frank bill that actually did protect the big financial operations [that were] ‘too big to fail.’

“If you want the United States to work well, you need to believe in free people and you need to believe in free market — and that’s what we’re going to be about — we’re going to be about opportunity for all,” he said. “I'll talk about my manufacturing plan to get people back to work so lower-income people can have good middle-income jobs because manufacturing is going to be brought back to this country.

“You provide hope, instead of what this president has done, which in many respects — you could argue — has incited this with the class warfare rhetoric that he has been spewing throughout this country that it’s millionaires and billionaires — it’s the haves versus the have-nots, and you get the response from his people who take to the streets for the have-nots.”