WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich mocked the Occupy Wall Street protesters on Saturday, saying they need to "get a job" and "take a bath."
"All the Occupy movement starts with the premise that we all owe them everything," Gingrich said at the Thanksgiving Family Forum in Iowa, as noted by Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress. "They take over a public park they didn't pay for, to go nearby to use bathrooms they didn't pay for, to beg for food from places they don't want to pay for, to obstruct those who are going to work to pay the taxes to sustain the bathrooms and to sustain the park, so they can self-righteously explain they are the paragons of virtue to which we owe everything."
"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 by saying to them, 'Go get a job right after you take a bath,'" continued Gingrich, to loud applause from the audience.
The Thanksgiving Family Forum, which was one more opportunity to hear from the GOP presidential candidates, was sponsored by the Family Leader, a group headed by controversial social conservative Bob Vander Plaats.
Vander Plaats and his group have claimed that homosexuality is a public health risk and suggested that children born into slavery were better off than those living in an America with Barack Obama as president.
Notably absent from Saturday's forum were Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, who are not campaigning as aggressively in Iowa as some of the other candidates.
In October, Gingrich expressed sympathy with Occupy Wall Street's concerns about rising student debt, saying, "Is it really fair to young people -- or for that matter to middle-aged people who go back to school -- to give them an inflated price just because you can borrow the money in the short run? You have to pay that money back, and that becomes a big burden."
Gingrich also said that people should be mad about the secrecy of the Wall Street bailout.
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