DNC Chair Schultz’s Statement on the Republican Presidential Debate in Iowa

By DNC Press

 

Following the Republican presidential debate in Iowa tonight, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz released the following statement:

 

“Tonight, the GOP candidates for president continued to demonstrate that the race to the right wing of the Republican Party is far from over.  In a last-ditch effort to woo conservative primary voters just weeks ahead of the Iowa Republican Caucus, the Republican candidates on tonight’s debate stage offered more of the same extreme economic policies and Tea Party rhetoric that we’ve heard in previous debates.  Newt Gingrich was a Tea Party politician even before there was a Tea Party – he supported gutting funding for education and Medicare to fund a tax cut for millionaires and shut down the government over it and those are the same policies he supports today.  And Mitt Romney, who’s now going all in to win the Iowa caucuses, threw out his yearlong playbook as an economic ‘Mr. Fix It’ and continued his hard right turn to appeal to the Tea Party, doubling down on his extreme ‘send ‘em home’ approach to immigration.  Romney, a millionaire 200 hundred times over, had the most out-of-touch moment in any debate so far – offering to bet Rick Perry $10,000 as casually as if it’s something he does all the time.

 

“What we did not see tonight – and what we have not seen in any of the previous GOP presidential debates – was a single proposal that will help middle-class Americans at this critical ‘make or break’ moment for millions of working families who are struggling to get ahead.  While the President has been fighting to get Congress to pass the payroll tax cut before millions of middle-class Americans see their taxes increase by $1,000 in just a matter of weeks, Mitt Romney once again called this vital economic relief a ‘little Band-Aid’ – even though his own economic plan would only give the typical working family just $54.  The truth is that Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and the rest of the GOP field are totally wrong on what it takes to help restore economic security for the middle class in this country – and tonight’s debate was proof positive of that sad reality.”