Obama tries to teach GOP some history in Maine, Vermont (VIDEO)
US President Barack Obama greets supporters during a campaign event at University of Vermont in Burlington today. Obama stopped in Vermont and Maine to attend fundraising events.
President Barack Obama tried to teach his Republican rivals a history lesson today in the northeast, saying GOP economic policies are “madness,” and not even Abraham Lincoln could save the party, AFP reported.
On a two-state, daylong fundraising trip through Vermont and Maine, Obama told supporters that Republicans are stuck in the past.
“We won’t win the race for new jobs and new businesses and middle-class security if we cling to this same old, worn-out, tired ‘you're on your own’ economics that the other side is peddling,” Obama said, according to Agence France-Presse.
“It was tried in the decades before the Great Depression. It didn’t work then. It was tried in the last decade. It didn’t work. … You know, the idea you would keep on doing the same thing over and over again, even though it's been proven not to work. That’s a sign of madness.”
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In Burlington, Vt., he took the GOP back even further, saying Lincoln “couldn’t win the nomination,” The Associated Press said.
Obama stood behind his health-care policies, currently in jeopardy from the Supreme Court, CNN said.
“Change is the health-care reform act we passed after a century of trying,” he said. “We believe that in America, nobody should go bankrupt just because they got sick.”
In Portland, Maine, he accused the Republican Party of compromising the middle class.
“They would gut things that we’ve always believed is at the core of making America great – education, science, caring for the most vulnerable,” Obama said, according to the AP. “They are wrong.”
The president made four stops today ahead of Saturday’s quarterly deadline to declare campaign fundraising totals.
Supporters paid between $44 and $5,000 to attend various functions, CNN reported.
His re-election campaign is expected to generate $2 million today.
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