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Rick Santorum: ‘There Are No Classes In America’

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» 30 comments

When talk turned to the economy and health care during Saturday night’s New Hampshire debate, presidential hopeful Rick Santorum made a rather noteworthy observation regarding Americans. Santorum said that he shrinks from the term “middle class.”

Why? Here’s how he put it:

RELATED: Mitt Romney Says People Who Fall Into Poverty Are ‘Still Middle Class’

The Governor [Mitt Romney] used a term earlier that I shrink from, and it’s one that I don’t think we should be using as Republicans: “Middle class.” There are no classes in America. We’re a country that don’t allow for titles. We don’t put people in classes. Maybe middle income people. But the idea, somehow or another, that we’re going to buy into the class warfare arguments of Barack Obama is something that should not be part of the Republican lexicon. That’s their job. Divide. Separate. Put one group against another. That’s not the language I’ll use as president.

Watch Santorum’s reply, via ABC:

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  • Anonymous

    Santorum voted against gym class when he was my Senator.  He’s not playing around. 

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_45S32GWGDRUJIL6E2U4HOZW4BM Bob

    Except there’s a section on Lil’ Ricky’s website titled: “Santorum Hopes to Rebuild Middle Class.” What a hypocritical putz.

  • Anonymous

    Hey Santorum! You need to scrub your website, STAT! http://www.ricksantorum.com/news/2011/09/santorum-hopes-rebuild-middle-class

  • Anonymous

    Rick Santorum has no class.

  • Anonymous

    A combination of sanctimonious, earnest, intolerant, preachy and dweebish. How in the world did this guy get laid enough to procreate?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Bart-Morgay/100001554351938 Bart Morgay

    With Cain and Bachmann gone now Santorum has stepped forward to be the voice of the clown wing of the GOP.

  • 12voltman1

    Does that mean the school children in your state did not play around as well?

  • Anonymous

    Hahahahahaha…I know several people have SAVED that. 

  • 12voltman1

    You know, I really should be rooting for Mr frothy. Because he ( besides Newt ) is the weakest candidate. But he is such a self

  • Anonymous

    Oh, they all played around.  He spent a huge portion of our taxes to make sure that there was No Child Left Behind.

  • 12voltman1

    Oh yeah, that unfunded George W Bush Program that was a joke.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Edwards/588445226 David Edwards

    TO Be fair he didnt create that headline its an article for the some online publication

  • expatpatriot

    I will happily acknowledge that Santorum has no class.

    I’m not sure that’s what he meant, though.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000873461523 Albert Brown

    Retroactive, birth control for the whole Teapublican field.

  • Anonymous

    What I don’t understand is:  How can Rick Santorum, on one hand, love faith and family, yet on the other hand want to bomb another country.  If he believe in the God of Abraham, then he should know that God loves all people and doesn’t take kindly to killing.  Iranians have families – including children.  Is it at all possible, that this man has moved so far to the right that he can’t think of anything but WAR?  Is he the new Dick Cheney?

    Americans are war weary.  No more war.  Why would we want come between another country’s civil war.  Not one country poked their nose in the American Civil War. That;’s a fact.  If the Afghans want to throw rocks at each other, strap bombs to themselves to kill up each other, that’s their business.  It is time we take care of America.

    As a Black…I mean “Blah” woman, I can say that I don’t trust this guy at all.  And I am an independent.

    The only option that the republicans have left is to CHEAT their way to victory.  We cannot let that happen.

  • Anonymous

    Yes, it was.

    But you defend the Obama admin, right?  I wouldn’t chuckle too hard.  Somehow he’s managed to top Bush’s spending.

  • 12voltman1

    You mean by investing in our country instead of cutting taxes for the wealthy and starting two unfunded wars?

  • Anonymous

    Santorum is now the most out of touch surpassing the other also-run contenders. Huntsman was the most sane of the candidates on stage tonight. That being said, Romney and family have been caught with tax-free money to the tune of a net worth of over 250 billion dollars. Much of that money in off-shore tax shelters in the Cayman island. Bain Capital which is owned by Romney has what is called an FOIA exemption 7(a) and the FBI denied access to all Bain Capital records. This is what money gets you when you belong to the top 1%-ers. After watching tonight’s debate, and there was more of a debate tonight, I came to the conclusion it was evident the also-runs were being too cordial to Romney. The biggest loser was Perry when he said he would send troops back into Iraq. They all stood together against the Sarbanes Oxley act of 2002 and the Frank Dodd Act because these two acts provide guidelines and restrictions put into place resulting from the recession of 2007 and 2008! There were major corporate and accounting scandals like Enron and Worldcom which cost investors billions. In essence these generic contenders of the TEA-GOP-Republicans for their nomination proved beyond any doubt, the real winner of tonight’s debate was President Obama. They referenced him numerous times and basically stood behind TEA party antics and issues while protecting the elite top tier tax payers, like Romney.

  • Anonymous

    What a sanctimonious moron.  He was routinely considered the stupidest man in the Senate and the voters of PA figured it out and he lost re-election by almost 20%.  He is right about one thing, there would be no middle class if he was President.  We’d all be poor, except for his corporate lobby friends.

  • Anna

    Yeah, just like there is no sex in the military

  • http://gregingleright.weebly.com/ Greg

    Rick is 10 kajillion percent correct. We should refuse to seperate people and things into seperate categories. I often wonder why, when I open a shoe box, it contains one left and one right shoe. In the time it took the manufacturer to seperate the shoes, I could have taught myself the valuable skill of walking while wearing two right shoes. And why, when I go to the store to buy berries, are the straw blue and rasp all segregated into their own unnatural berry bantustans? It’s wrongness! I’m hopeful that Rick will soon explain the way in which he is no longer Catholic, because to create that type of once useful and widely accepted distinction is now a sign of religious warfare. Santorum 2012! (because words are just something something)

  • Anonymous

    Why should he have class? He is not a teacher.

  • Anonymous

    “There are no classes in America. We’re a country that don’t allow for titles.”

    O.K., we can just call it the Haves and the Have Not… sigh

  • Anonymous

    People love getting their dresses over their heads with statements like this. The “middle class” was a term coined by Karl Marx. Obviously in 2011, the term has meaning and it is helpful when discussing the economy. But Santorum is absolutely right here. If you enjoy facts and think they matter, you only have to look at what the IRS tells us. Individuals move in and out of the lower, middle, and upper classes every year at an astounding rate….

    ” People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005. The top one percent — “the rich” who are supposed to be monopolizing
    the money, according to the left — saw their incomes decline by a
    whopping 26 percent.
    Meanwhile, the average taxpayers’ real income increased by 24 percent between 1996 and 2005.”

  • Anonymous

    I can’t help but think that a man who is so obsessed with gay people, must have something to hide in his own closet.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IX5MJPKCY3XTRN5UUMBQNBIPKI OomYaaqub

    No Child Left Behind was a bipartisan program. The late Senator Kennedy was a major sponsor.

  • 12voltman1

    Yes it was.Kennedy also wanted the federal government to fund it as well. No Child Left Behind’s under-funded mandates left states and schools straitjacketed. However, even if the mandates were fully funded, their promise of “school accountability” turned out to be, in reality, a fearsome, curriculum-distorting monster of high-stakes testing. The lack of funding made a bad program worse

  • Anonymous

    I wonder if any of his supporters had heard a similar speech by Marx regarding the POWER OF A CLASSLESS COMMUNIST state if they would still follow there future communist leader.. HELL I wonder if any GOP person has the courage to question this “classless” nation of which he speaks.. Its not like socialist and communist republics dont have a WEALTHY group of people (generally in government or in “private yet government linked” enterprise) and a not so wealthy group of people (generally they work, a lot, for these “private yet government linked” businesses” and dont have that much to show for it.. but they are happy.., right?). GOOo NEW GOP!!! You guys are the current global embarrassment keeping UFO’s from landing!

  • Anonymous

    While RS may technically be correct, in that we don’t have a class or caste system like India, he’s dead wrong when you think about the issue in a practical manner. There is a class system in the US-a rose by any other name is still a rose. If there were no class system, the majority of wealth would not be concentrated with the 1%, everyone would have access to adequate health care and everyone would have access to a good college education. This does not mean redistribution like the GOTP claims-rather it means that everyone does their part in terms of taxes owed, something not happening right now.

  • labman57

    Why bother confronting reality when you can simply redefine it instead?

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