GOP Candidates Emphasize Their Poor Backgrounds (VIDEO)

It is a staple of modern political campaigning to play up your humble roots to connect with voters. Perhaps seeking to draw a contrast with President Barack Obama, who some have deemed "elitist," GOP presidential candidates took many opportunities to mention their simple beginnings in 2011.

The mashup above of campaign moments features Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney.

Romney and Huntsman grew up in very wealthy families. But, like their fellow candidates, both of them speak of families who are having trouble "making ends meet" and the pain of the middle class.

Check out this recap of the campaign so far to see the candidates speak of poorer backgrounds and discuss how people are hurting because of the recession.

 

 

Comments

[MisDemeanor]

02:39 AM on 01/05/2012

We were so po' we couldn't afford the other "o" and "r"!

[mamacat]

01:10 AM on 01/03/2012

We were so poor, I passed my clothes down to my younger sibling, and then our Mom boxed them up and mailed them to our cousins to wear. And that is no joke.

We were so poor, homemade potato soup was a treat, and hot dogs were a delight. Cokes were unheard of. But, thank goodness, we never went hungry, we were never cold inside our own house, and we felt safe.

[woodnwire]

05:55 PM on 01/02/2012

we were so poor, a man asked me if i lost a shoe...no, i found one.

[sergal stew]

02:52 PM on 01/02/2012

Man and I thought it was only actual poor people who fought about who was poorer and more prone to ridiculous lawsuits: http://lawblog.legalmatch.com/2011/12/27/pay-what-you-want-businesses-sue-non-paying-customers/

[balrog221]

01:07 PM on 01/02/2012

oops Mit got confused with the background check on his migrant workers.

[Dan Kreutzer]

09:56 AM on 01/02/2012

Shades of Marie Antoinette. At Versailles she and her Court would dress as poor people for games

[mamacat]

01:11 AM on 01/03/2012

That pretty much sums it up.

[Dan Kreutzer]

09:42 AM on 01/02/2012

"when I was a poor person, I thought like a poor person and acted like a poor person. But when I bcame rich i put away my poor person and acted like a rich person." (with apologies to St. Paul)

[Steve Rockett]

01:40 AM on 01/02/2012

We were so poor, we lived on used snowflakes and twigs. The republican kids would take our twigs away and trickle down on our snowflakes. We were so poor our dad built our shanty out of unpopped popcorn under the railroad tracks. My mom repaired old patches with used bandaids and spider webs. And these guys think they had it hard.

[radams36]

04:37 PM on 01/02/2012

You were LUCKY to have snowflakes and twigs. We used to eat our memories of snowflakes, and smell the twigs Mitt Romney's poor family were ABOUT to eat.

Unpopped popcorn? A LUXURY! We used to live in a wet newspaper our Dad pulled out of a sewer. And if the newspaper tore, we didn't have your fancy bandaids and spider webs, we had to pull out our internal organs and use those for patches!

And the despicable ratbags in today's Republican party are going to do their DEAD LEVEL BEST to put the 99% into JUST such conditions. No Social Security as we know it (Politifact's false equivalency BS aside), no Medicaid or Medicare, and poor jobs with poorer pay and fewer benefits. That's what you're voting for when you elect the Scott Walkers and Rick Scotts, and electing the Ron Pauls, Rick Perrys, Newt Gingriches, and Michele Bachmanns of the country will make things even worse.

[Steve Rockett]

01:16 AM on 01/03/2012

Wow, you had internal organs?

[inonoatama]

12:34 AM on 01/02/2012

An interesting set of facts about “elitist” colleges and universities in the “blue states.” Their alumni:

George Bush — Yale ‘68
George H.W. Bush — Yale ‘50
Dick Cheney — attended Yale, left due to poor grades
Antonin Scalia — Harvard Law, ‘60
William Rehnquist — Harvard M.A., Stanford LLD
Clarence Thomas — Yale Law, ‘74
Donald Rumsfeld — Princeton, ‘54
Orrin Hatch — Univ. of Pittsburgh Law, ‘62
Elizabeth Dole — Harvard Law, ‘65
Tom Ridge — Harvard, ‘67
Pail Wolfowitz — Cornell, ‘65, Univ. of Chicago, ‘72
Pat Buchanan — Gerogetown ‘61, Columbia ‘62
Bill O Reilly — M.P.A., Harvard
Ann Coulter — B.A. Cornell, J.D., Univ. of Michigan
Bill Frist — Princeton, ‘74, Harvard Med, ‘78
Ken Mehlman — Harvard Law, ‘91
John Sununu — B.A., M.A., MIT, M.B.A., Harvard
Ted Stevens — UCLA and Harvard Law

Yup, they loving putting down the blue states. But when it comes time to send the kids to school, they sure won’t be sending junior to Oral Roberts University or Bob Jones.

[wilray]

05:10 PM on 01/01/2012

Mitt Romany isn't a poor person. He just plays one on television. He doesn't understand your reality show called "Your Real Life."

[spartanladkenny]

12:25 PM on 01/01/2012

Once during a camping trip, I had to grill my meat over a camp fire. I had to take a dump in a crappy port-o-john; once in the wilderness. I was without cell phone network for 3 days. I came back to my mansion and couldn't wait to jump into my jacuzzi with a bottle of wine.

You should vote for me because I understand what poor people go through from my experience at the camping trip.

[cpsummer2457]

11:01 AM on 01/01/2012

They were right to put this in the comedy section because it's a joke that any of these people and I use the term loosely, understand anything about being poor or middle class.

[DirtyLemon]

09:54 AM on 01/01/2012

Shoes?!?!?! We couldn't afford feet!!! We had to limp through the snow on bloody stumps to the mines. Ten miles. Uphill both ways.

[ThomastonPaine]

08:13 PM on 12/31/2011

The following is only semi-true in a false sense and is perhaps meant as solely a parody of certain well-worn bipartisan “Horatio Algeristic” electioneering techniques and mostly imaginary stump speeches.

How poor and stupid was your family growin up?

My family was so poor and stupid that my Momma wouldn’t get food stamps cuz she said she wasn’t gonna eat no stamps…

But my Daddy was different…he said he’d try it.

So one day….on the slide… Daddy took me down to the post office and threw me in the dumpster barefoot… he said it was jus’ like noodlin for catfish and for me to grab some keepers…

It was dark in there and something bit me, but after a short while I had armfuls, mouthfuls and toes full of paper cuts and junk mail. Daddy pulled me out…and we spent 2 hours jus’ sittin right there in the parkin lot sortin through the treasure mail or “viddle preppin” as Daddy called it… until we had piles of first, second, bulk and frankin.

We must-a spent another two hours or so looking through all them magazines and catalogs too. Daddy especially liked the one with the picture that he said looked like “Third Momma” before she had me…but I still don’t think I have anything to do with “Third Momma’s” not having teeth or having to wear them chiffon “comfort fit” polyester yoga pants all day…

[ThomastonPaine]

08:11 PM on 12/31/2011

Continued…

I just kept myself busy with a nice “National Review” article on enterprise zones and this awesome pull out diagram I found on “The Future Bullet Trains of Cleveland” in “Popular Science.”

…But by late afternoon we was gettin real hungry and the people walkin in and out of the post office kept messin up our piles and really pissin Daddy off…so we finally settled on the two most appetizin first class letters with cancelled stamps still on em…Mine had what looked like a coffee stain on it…Daddy’s had ketchup …or what we hoped was ketchup?

Anyway….Daddy thought I should go first…so he carefully tore the corner of the envelope off …handed it to me and said “Bone Appetite.”

So I started chewing on my very first food stamp and quickly found that it tasted somethin like a fine mix of ½ Caffe Latte and kindergarten paste...but it still wasn’t very good…so I spit it out.

Daddy saw my face and immediately decided “food stampin” wasn’t for him neither...so we just went home bagged a couple of squirrels and told “Third Momma” she was right.

“Third Momma” was always to the right.

Moral of the story… I chewed on a food stamp, but I didn’t swallow.

Do I still have your vote?