Elizabeth Warren, who has called herself the “intellectual godmother” of Occupy Wall Street and claimed “there is nobody who got rich on his own,” made another grandiose assertion on Sunday. In an interview with the National Journal, she stated:
Every now and again, I meet with someone who’s been very successful on Wall Street, who says “I want to support your campaign because I believe you will save capitalism. I believe in capitalism, and I understand there have to be rules. And they have to be consistently enforced.” That’s what I think is at stake in this election.
Even the National Journal noted that Ms. Warren’s comments about her role “saving capitalism” appeared more than a little bit self-inflated:
That’s a hefty assignment, the salvation of capitalism, but Democratic strategists, while cringing at the grandiosity of the statement, say she articulates her vision for the assignment as well as any candidate. When President Obama earlier this month attempted to replicate Warren’s call-out of entrepreneurs as insufficiently grateful for the support structure that government offers the private sector, Republicans hammered him and forced him to cut a new ad explaining what he meant.
As the Boston Herald reported today, Republicans and conservatives quickly seized on Ms. Warren’s outlandish claims:
“She certainly has a high opinion of herself,” chortled Republican strategist Rob Gray, adding, “It’s not one that most people who started their business from the ground up would agree with.”
“Nice try, but to make it sound as though government is business-friendly is laughable,” snarked Fran Wendel-boe, a New Hampshire Republican operative who noted that voters nationwide have bristled at Obama and Warren’s claims that business owners can’t succeed without government help.
On Tuesday, the Boston Herald reported that Ms. Warren backed off her claim that she was the superhero of capitalism:
Democrat Elizabeth Warren admitted today it was “silly” for her to say that Wall Street execs are behind her because she can rescue capitalism.
“I passed along a comment that was over the top and it was silly for me to do so,” Warren said during a stop in Somerville.
Warren repeated the same line when asked to explain her capitalist superhero statement as she toured the Assembly Row construction site as part of her “Rebuild Now” campaign tour.
Warren’s comments come on the heels of a television ad in which she said that America should follow China’s example and invest much more in public infrastructure. Shortly after this ad aired, it was announced that she would not be the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina in September, though she will be a featured speaker.
Michael Patrick Leahy is a Breitbart News contributor, Editor of Broadside Books’ Voices of the Tea Party e-book series, and author of Covenant of Liberty: The Ideological Origins of the Tea Party Movement.