GOP presidential candidate New Gingrich's complaint about free-loading Occupy Wall Street protesters needing to "get a job" and "take a bath" before doing so was denounced this morning by MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts as "toxic language."
"I know he's trying, that is Newt Gingrich, trying to appeal to conservatives, but could this kind of toxic language end up ultimately backfiring?" Roberts asked guest David Goodfriend, a Democratic strategist [video posted after page break]
"I think it could" Goodfriend agreed, noting how his party had dismissed the appeal of the Tea Party protests, adding, "The Tea Party represented a bona fide feeling among American voters, and I would say the same thing of the Occupy movement."
"To take this sort of cartoonish picture that Newt Gingrich is painting as gospel looks past the fact that you've got retired police captains and moms and teachers along with young people in those parks," the former Clinton White House staffer argued.
"Right, out of work veterans, too, who have returned home from fighting the wars" might be offended by Gingrich's comments, Roberts helpfully added to Goodfriend's argument that they were "politically risky, even on the right."
