In last night’s GOP Presidential debate (sans Mitt Romney) in Des Moines, Iowa, Newt Gingrich decided to pull out all the 60s cliches, with a little help from the 17th century.

Transcript from Raw Story (emphasis mine):

“Jefferson said that people that want to be both free and ignorant are asking for something that has never been and will never be,” the former House Speaker told an audience during a debate at the First Federated Church in Des Moines, Iowa Saturday. “Captain John Smith said in 1607 in the first English speaking permanent colony to the aristocrats who paid their way and didn’t want to work, ‘If you don’t work, you won’t eat.’”

“Let me take that for a brief moment to describe Occupy Wall Street. All of the Occupy movement starts with the premise that we all owe them everything. They take over a public park they didn’t pay for, to go near by to use bathrooms they didn’t pay for, to beg for food from places they they don’t want to pay for, to obstruct those that are going to work to pay the taxes to sustain the bathrooms and to sustain the park so that they can self-righteously explain that they are the paragons of virtue to which we owe everything.”

He added: “Now, that is a pretty good symptom of how much the left has collapsed as a moral system in this country and why you need to reassert something as simple as saying to them, ‘Go get a job right after you take a bath.’”

The crowd ate it up.

Here’s the video:

This is far from the first time we’ve heard Republicans refer to the OWS protesters as lazy, dirty and entitled. Maybe, however, it’s time to dissect a few of Newt’s comments.

“Captain John Smith said in 1607 in the first English speaking permanent colony to the aristocrats who paid their way and didn’t want to work, ‘If you don’t work, you won’t eat.’”

Ironically, Captain John Smith was speaking about the aristocrats…the 1%. I’m sure the 99% would be thrilled with the idea that the entire one percent actually work for their food.

“All of the Occupy movement starts with the premise that we all owe them everything.”

Again, he could be speaking about the one percent. The 99% provide all the labor, while the one percent wants to end minimum wage, unions, medical benefits and even child labor laws. It seems that the one percent feels that we owe them our children, the food from our mouths and the clothes off our backs.

“Go get a job right after you take a bath.”

Most OWS protesters are employed, but for those who aren’t, I’m sure they would love to get a job. Unfortunately, for every job, there are four unemployed people.

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