POPULIST SPEECH

Obama Condemns Income Inequality

Compares GOP to Gilded Age elites.

President Obama channeled some 99 percent populism in a big speech on economic inequality, saying that it is at the worst level since the Great Depression and that it’s a “make or break moment for the middle class." The speech, which used the "moralistic" language of the Occupy protests, was held on the GOP's turf, in Kansas. Invoking Theodore Roosevelt, Obama said that a free market is not “a free license to take whatever you want from whoever you can.” Switching to campaign mode, he contrasted his stance with the Republicans, whom he compared to the Gilded Age elites that opposed Roosevelt and “thought massive inequality and exploitation was just the price of progress.” Obama also threatened to veto any attempt by congressional Republicans to weaken the new consumer-protection panel.