Says bailouts, Obama's economics have not worked
By Eric Boehm | PA Independent
CAMP HILL — U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey offered a passionate defense of capitalism and criticized the concept of fairness that has become central to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign while speaking to a gathering of conservatives in central Pennsylvania.
Toomey, Pennsylvania's first-term Republican senator from Zionsville, said capitalism offered a morally superior system of economics that allowed for freedom of opportunity and human dignity, while bigger government and taxpayer-financed bailouts of whole industries would only protect the elite at the expense of the rest.
In short, he said, "as government gets bigger, we get smaller."
Toomey saved his sharpest barbs for Obama and what he said was false message of “fairness” that has driven the president’s policies of redistributing wealth in America, though Toomey did praise Obama at the opening of his remarks for supporting the jobs bill passed through Congress this week.
"The president says fairness is the reason he should be re-elected. I believe fairness is the reason he must be defeated," he said, drawing applause from the crowd.
The comments were made during a half hour appearance at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, an annual gathering of Pennsylvania conservatives in this Harrisburg suburb. Presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are scheduled to appear on Saturday at the event.
The Pennsylvania Democratic Party, in a statement, said the gathering was the "latest in the Republican Party's sprint to the right in an attempt to appeal to tea party activists as they ignore middle-class Pennsylvanians."
