Charlie Webster, the chair of the Maine Republican Party, has spent the summer making bogus claims about voter fraud, and even likened same-day voting registration as part of some gay agenda.
But last night, at a meeting with University of Maine College Republicans, Webster got off a corker, as we say here. A blast that is likely to be used over and over again in the 2012 election campaign:
If you can’t make a living in 40 hours a week, work 80, or go without.
Webster is the head of the same Republican Party that voted down an attempt to raise Maine's minimum wage by 25 cents (to $7.75 an hour). The same Republican Party that is still trying to force through so-called right-to-work legislation. The same Republican Party that tried to enact a "training wage" for those aged 20 and under.
This at a time when good paying manufacturing jobs are few and far between, and Maine's two most rural counties are seeing their populations decline.
And yet Webster had the hubris to call Democrats "elitists" in the same meeting.