Herman Cain charged Sunday that groups sympathetic to President Obama were ginning up the Occupy Wall Street protests to take attention away from the administration’s policies.
Cain, the GOP presidential candidate and former Godfather’s Pizza chief executive, also continued to call the growing protests “anti-American” and said demonstrators were merely jealous of those more successful.
“We know that the unions and certain union-related organizations have been behind these protests that are going on on Wall Street and other parts around the country,” Cain said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“It’s coordinated to create a distraction so people won’t focus on the failed policies of this administration,” he added.
Both Cain and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who also appeared on the CBS show, blamed the protests on “class warfare” fomented by Obama.
The Occupy Wall Street protests, which have spread to many parts of the country, have come under criticism from many Republicans in recent days.
On Sunday, Gingrich also said that an education system that was teaching “really dumb ideas” was another cause of the current demonstrations.
“We have had a strain of hostility to free enterprise – and frankly, a strain of hostility to classic America – starting in our academic institutions and spreading across this country,” said Gingrich, who is also seeking the Republican nomination.
For his part, Cain also dubbed the protests anti-capitalist and said demonstrators would be better served targeting the White House.
“I don’t have a lot of patience for people who want to protest the success of somebody else,” Cain said.
