While Mitt Romney and Rick Perry fought like two guys waiting to test-drive the same Audi at last night's GOP debate, Herman Cain and Ron Paul got into it a bit over Occupy Wall Street. Cain proudly stood behind his earlier statements that jobless people only have themselves to blame, and was rewarded with a cascade of howls and cheer from the GOP audience. To his credit, Paul called him out on it: "I think Mr. Cain has blamed the victims. There are a lot of people who are victims of this business cycle." Watch below.
Cain, who has previously labeled protesters "jealous" and called OWS a pro-Obama conspiracy, argued that protesters were directing their anger in the wrong place: "Wall Street didn't put in failed economic policies. Wall Street didn't spend a trillion dollars that didn't do any good. Wall Street isn't going around the country trying to sell another $450 billion. They ought to be over in front of the White House taking out their frustration," he said, to the visible delight of several paunchy, older white men in the crowd.
Paul told Cain he was blaming the victim, explained his frustration with the big bank bailouts by pol's, and said OWS doesn't quite go as far as he'd like: "I'd go to Washington as well, and I'd go to the Federal Reserve. They create the financial bubbles. You can't solve these problems if you don't know where these bubbles come from." Ultimately, he said people should blame the economic policies which led to the financial crisis...and we shouldn't trust the government.
Ultimately, Cain admitted that Paul was "partly right"—but for some OWS haters, that mere suggestion would be giving protesters too much credit: “They’re not marching for jobs,” said Rush Limbaugh during his broadcast yesterday. “They’re protesting because they have to work. They’re protesting because they don’t want to work...My dogs make more sense than these people do." If Limbaugh is just trying to troll OWS, then he could probably take some pointers from this woman:
