Learning nothing, it seems, from the negative reaction to President Obama referring to the United States as “lazy,” Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., called for American voters “to get off the couch” to prevent Republicans from “be[ing] even more abusive to the poor.”
Ellison said that anyone should be able to figure out that they need to vote Democratic in the next election. “Without regard to individual intellect, this is a question about ‘do you want to invest in America for prosperity or austerity and cut taxes for the most privileged few?'” he told MSNBC’s Martin Bashir. Without low intelligence as an excuse for opposing Democrats, Ellison turned to laziness.”This is a clear choice and I tell all Americans get off the couch and get in motion.”
His remarks evoke President Obama’s comment that “we’ve been a bit lazy” as a nation in attracting foreign investment, a remark often (incorrectly) interpreted as calling Americans lazy.
In a bit of blatant class warfare, Ellison warned that Republicans would “take it to the middle class and be even more abusive to the poor” if they win the 2012 election.
At the risk of meeting Ellison on the merits, his suggestion that Republicans want “to cut the network of government services even more” implies that such services have already been cut. But the main cut to services in the last several years came when Democrats, including Keith Ellison, voted to cut Medicare by $500 billion in order to “pay” for Obamacare, which was itself a massive expansion of government services that Republicans have not cut (although they certainly would like to repeal it).
(H/T RCP)
