Herman Cain: Yes, Wall Street Protesters Are Just Jealous
As protests spread across the country, the GOP candidate suggests participants are taking to the streets to play the "victim card."
| Posted Sunday, Oct. 9, 2011, at 1:25 PM
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
This weekend, Occupy Wall Street protests continued to spread across the country, far from the original epicenter of Lower Manhattan. But Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is still not impressed.
In an appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation, the millionaire and former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza restaurants, stood by comments made last week that protests are “anti-American” and suggested that they were coordinated by unions and other organizations to take the focus away from President Obama’s failed policies.
“Did you really mean that, literally, that they’re just jealous?” asked host Bob Schieffer. “Couldn’t it also be that these people don’t have a job, they don’t know where to turn, they don’t see any answers to the problems they have and you think it comes down to jealousy?”
“Bob, yes, I do, because it’s class warfare,” answered Cain. “Some of them are there because they don’t have a job, yes. But the fact of the matter is, why aren’t there jobs? Go and picket the White House.”
Cain went on to say that he didn’t have much sympathy for protesters because his parents “never played the victim card,” hoping that rich people could lose something so they could get something.
Candidate Newt Gingrich, who was on the program with Cain, said in his opinion that a “bad education system” that taught “really dumb ideas” was to blame for the protests.
By Cain and Gingrich’s definition, that’s a lot of jealous, badly educated people playing the victim. In their 23rd day Sunday, protests criticizing the transfer of wealth during the economic downturn and a widening gap between the country’s richest and the rest had spread to Britain. Saturday, protesters forced the closing of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
Progressive blog Daily Kos logged what the author claimed were more than 200 Facebook “solidarity” pages and similar occupation events, some of which were starting up this weekend, happening from Waterbury, Conn., to Miami and up to Vancouver.
“Social and economic inequalities are the tipping point, and people are hungry for getting involved and trying to do something to change it,” Occupy Atlanta protester Jim Nichols told CNN. “It’s almost like, ‘I want my American dream back.’ ”
