At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, Andrew Breitbart, a right-wing political blogger and the man who helped bring down Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner, gave a passionate speech that riled up the attendees. As the audience raucously applauded his promise to release videos of President Barack Obama during his college days that would show he was “radical,” Breitbart tried to deliver the knockout punch.

​“We are going to vet him from his college days to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008,” Breitbart said.
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Indeed, “class warfare” has become the go-to catchphrase throughout the Republican base. Republicans have repeatedly used it to portray Obama’s repeated attempts to increase the taxes of the richest Americans as dividing the United States of America and turning Americans against each other.

Even if the Obama administration may have “targeted” the richest Americans, it had a goal in mind: to increase revenue and to reduce tax inequality.

Today’s Republican party, however, has repeatedly pitted Americans against each other through its fiery rhetoric for merely having different views or different lifestyles. Indeed, it has spouted out divisive statements that have targeted anger towards certain parts of the American public.

In attacks against President Obama’s administration and events such as the recent California Proposition 8 ruling, Republicans have mainly singled out the “elites” in cities like Washington, Chicago and San Francisco for their “insider politics and cronies” and their “liberal agendas” against the family.

“When it comes to dividing Americans, it’s Republicans who, in recent years, have carved out a nation into two distinct territories. There’s the ‘heartland’ and then there’s the rest of the country: a vast, nightmarish wasteland of college professors, museums and people who recycle,” said comedian Bill Maher his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher.

During a speech to Las Vegas supporters last week, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich delivered a quote that surprisingly picked up little traction in the media. Gingrich blasted the “elites” who ride the subway. Yes, riding SEPTA to your Chinatown BYO, according to Newt Gingrich’s logic, is so elitist.

“Those who, you know, live in high-rise apartment buildings writing for fancy newspapers in the middle of town after they ride the metro, who don’t understand that for most Americans the ability to buy a home, to have their own property, to have a sense of belonging is one of the greatest achievements of their life, and it makes them feel like they are good solid citizens.”

Republicans attack the “elite” for being out of touch with the rest of America. Yet, how does this rhetoric not qualify as “class warfare”? As Maher said, Republicans have created two Americas: the “real America” and the remaining population that does not know the true meaning and values of America. Thus, it seems like Republicans, not President Obama, are trying to turn Americans against each other and to divide the United States of America.

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