Speaking this week on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, Cain responded to a question on what he would say to the ‘occupy’ demonstrators if given an opportunity.

“I would want this crowd to hear first, your success is not dependent upon wishing that someone else is not successful. Blaming Wall Street and blaming big banks, and blaming those that have succeeded in America under our free market system is never going to make you happy, and it’s never going to make you rich.

“Secondly, if you really want to do something to create jobs in this country, why don’t you go and picket the White House. That’s why where we have failed economic policies. That’s where we have policies that have kept unemployment up over 9%. You’re picketing the wrong source. It’s not those that have produced in this country. It’s the failed policies of this administration. If you look in the mirror, you will realize that the only person that you can blame for what you don’t have is the person you’re looking at in the mirror.”

Cain said those demonstrating are guilty of “playing the victim card,” and that they are not victims of anything.

“I don’t have a lot of patience for someone who believes that the government should take from one group and give to another group,” he said.

Hewitt asked how Obama should address this group, “which clearly comes from his Alinskyite side of the political ledger.” Cain said those demonstrating should be told to “go home and get a job, or go home and go to school.”

Many right-wing members of the media, including Rush Limbaugh, have done their best to paint a picture of the demonstrators as strict liberals who are supporters or previous supporters of Barack Obama. Unfortunately, the view is too simplistic, and completely disregards what too many of the protestors are saying. For instance, bail-outs for large corporations — those we now know of as “too big to fail” — wasn’t a sole Obama administration activity. Federal money spent to wage war in Afghanistan and Iraq wasn’t only approved under the Obama administration.

Likewise, while the Bush tax cuts began under their namesake, they’ve not ended there. Protestors are just as angry at the Obama administration for perpetrating what they see as economic inequalities.

As The Iowa Independent previously reported, the faith community is also beginning to take note and become active within the movement because they understand that the demonstrators are speaking out about ethical and moral issues. Ironically enough, such faith communities are arguing that if a corporation is a person, such as has been voiced specifically by Republicans on the Iowa stump in the aftermath of Citizens United, then corporate rights also end when another person’s begins. In short, no corporation/person has the right to make profits at the expense of someone else, which remains a key charge of the demonstrators.

Speaking this week on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, Cain responded to a question on what he would say to the ‘occupy’ demonstrators if given an opportunity.

“I would want this crowd to hear first, your success is not dependent upon wishing that someone else is not successful. Blaming Wall Street and blaming big banks, and blaming those that have succeeded in America under our free market system is never going to make you happy, and it’s never going to make you rich.

“Secondly, if you really want to do something to create jobs in this country, why don’t you go and picket the White House. That’s why where we have failed economic policies. That’s where we have policies that have kept unemployment up over 9%. You’re picketing the wrong source. It’s not those that have produced in this country. It’s the failed policies of this administration. If you look in the mirror, you will realize that the only person that you can blame for what you don’t have is the person you’re looking at in the mirror.”

Cain said those demonstrating are guilty of “playing the victim card,” and that they are not victims of anything.

“I don’t have a lot of patience for someone who believes that the government should take from one group and give to another group,” he said.

Hewitt asked how Obama should address this group, “which clearly comes from his Alinskyite side of the political ledger.” Cain said those demonstrating should be told to “go home and get a job, or go home and go to school.”

Many right-wing members of the media, including Rush Limbaugh, have done their best to paint a picture of the demonstrators as strict liberals who are supporters or previous supporters of Barack Obama. Unfortunately, the view is too simplistic, and completely disregards what too many of the protestors are saying. For instance, bail-outs for large corporations — those we now know of as “too big to fail” — wasn’t a sole Obama administration activity. Federal money spent to wage war in Afghanistan and Iraq wasn’t only approved under the Obama administration.

Likewise, while the Bush tax cuts began under their namesake, they’ve not ended there. Protestors are just as angry at the Obama administration for perpetrating what they see as economic inequalities.

As The Iowa Independent previously reported, the faith community is also beginning to take note and become active within the movement because they understand that the demonstrators are speaking out about ethical and moral issues. Ironically enough, such faith communities are arguing that if a corporation is a person, such as has been voiced specifically by Republicans on the Iowa stump in the aftermath of Citizens United, then corporate rights also end when another person’s begins. In short, no corporation/person has the right to make profits at the expense of someone else, which remains a key charge of the demonstrators.

On the anniversary week of the passage of the Obama administration’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Gingrich went on the Hugh Hewitt radio talk show and said House Republicans need to continue pushing the repeal of the health care reform law (a measure that was approved by the House but has gone nowhere in the Senate), by packaging the repeal with the debt ceiling increase. The strategy, he said, should be to put political pressure on vulnerable Senate Democrats.

Gingrich told Hewitt:

“I personally favor passing the repeal of Obamacare, putting it on the debt ceiling, going to the country. The House Republicans have the votes to put it in the debt ceiling. They should do it very early. And then they should go to the country and focus attention on the Democrats in the Senate. There are 23 Democratic seats up in 2012. And we ought to try to bring enough pressure to bear on individual Democrats like Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Bill Nelson of Florida, that we are able to actually get the repeal of Obamacare through the Senate, and then say to the President, if you want to meet your Constitutional obligations and avoid a crisis on the debt ceiling, you either have to sign the repeal of Obamacare, or you have to provide a comparable $2 trillion dollars in savings.”

On the show, Hewitt pointed to the Health Care Compact Alliance, which is being used as a strategy for states to fight back against the federal health care law. The alliance, which is chaired by Eric O’Keefe, a private investor from Wisconsin, provides “tools that enable citizens to exert greater control over their government” and “was developed to offer Americans more influence over decisions that govern health care.” The alliance keeps donors identities confidential. (Read more about the Health Care Compact Alliance at The Texas Independent.)

Last week, the Health Care Compact passed in Georgia, Gingrich’s home state and the first state out of the 12 where it’s been introduced to pass both the state House and the Senate.

Gingrich told Hewitt that he was “aware” of the HCC and that he “thinks it’s a good idea.”

Gingrich also said he’s in favor of a government shutdown unless Congress agrees on a long-term spending plan, which Roll Call points out could happen April 9.

A day after Hewitt’s conversation with Gingrich and after speaking with Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Pat Toomey (R-Penn.), the talk show host posted the following on his blog:

I am alarmed that both of these senators seem willing to vote for a debt ceiling hike in exchange for legislative language on future spending caps, when what is needed immediately and urgently are deep cuts in current spending and entitlement reform. Both men are serious, thoughtful conservatives, and no doubt spending caps are a good idea, but I don’t see how promises of future good behavior will work to control the deficits we are piling to the sky right now.

If there is a genuine fiscal crisis in the land brought about by trillions and trillions in deficits, the Congressional Republicans ought to be more willing to confront the president and Senate Democrats, even to the point of impasse and a partial government shut-down.

If the peril is real, they have to be willing to make a difficult argument to the public.

Nobody wants a partial government shut-down, but nobody wants surgery or chemo when cancer is discovered either. If federal spending is the cancer in the body politic that is threatening the nation’s viability, currency and growth, then the GOP has to be willing to do what it takes to remedy the problem.

(Emphasis in the original)

To some media professionals whom I admire because you don’t let anyone tell you to sit down and shut up, please keep making the idiots’ heads spin. Thank you for not taking our Freedom of the Press for granted, you bold and patriotic, fair and balanced media folks. Keep calling it like you see it: Amanda, Andrew, Ann, Bill(s), Bob, Cal, Dennis, Dick, Eddie, Fred, Glenn, Greta, Hugh, Joey, John, Jonah, Larry, Laura, Lou, Mark, Mary, Michael, Michelle, R.A.M., Rich, Rush, S.E., Sean, Tammy, Walter… and there are more. I join you in standing up for what is right. Remember that as your voice is heard and your spine is stiffened, the spines of others are stiffened, too.

Who’s who? Here are my best guesses for most of them: Amanda Carpenter of The Washington Times, Ann Coulter, Bill Kristol, Bill O’Reilly, Cal Thomas, Dennis Miller, Fred Barnes, Glenn Beck, Greta Van Susteren, Hugh Hewitt, Jonah Goldberg, Larry Kudlow, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, Mark Levin, Michael Reagan, Michelle Malkin, Rich Lowry, Rush Limbaugh, S.E. Cupp, Sean Hannity, Tammy Bruce, and Walter Williams. Why not use their whole names? Good question.

That’s an interesting evolution for Romney; his 2004 book “Turnaround” was a memoir of running the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, a fairly straightforward business book that happened to be published by Regnery. The dirty work of writing a campaign book went to Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio host, who penned “A Mormon in the White House?” and gave conservatives an incredibly sunny view of a man whose every flip-flop could be explained away. And it’s a different tack that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee took, publishing a rather vicious memoir about the 2008 election days after it was over.

Something to watch out for: how close the release dates of Romney’s book and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s book are, and the way that they’re viewed as opening media salvos for 2012.

This base of support for Palin — maybe not that large, but very passionate, and very powerful in places like the Iowa Republican Caucuses — isn’t going to abandon her just because the Serious People in the GOP laugh her off in favor of blow-dried flip-flopping pols like Mitt Romney or blandly “electable” figures like Tim Pawlenty. To her supporters, mockery is like nectar.

National Review’s Jim Geraghty and Hugh Hewitt provided some proof of this today:

My first thought was that it tied heavily to her appearance; in liberals’ minds, conservatives are supposed to look like the couple from the painting American Gothic: Dour and joyless, aged, spartan and frail. Political leaders aren’t supposed to be young, really good looking women, full of energy, smiles and winks.

Hugh suggested it tied to the contrast between her lifestyle and her critics: “She is the embodiment of the anti-choice, the opposite of every choice that lefty elites have ever made — as to going back home instead of moving to the west coast, having children, having a child with Downs, staying married to one man the whole time, choosing rural or suburban over urban and living a generally conservative lifestyle, working with her hands… That everything she is is the antithesis of everything that liberal urban elites are, so it’s not just enough to say, ‘I disagree with you,’; she has to be repudiated and crushed.”

The argument that liberals despise Palin because she had a child with Down syndrome probably makes less sense outside of the talk radio sphere than anything else said about her.

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2006:

2009:

To be fair, the GOP did pretty well in 2004.