RNC chair: 'Of course the party doesn't favor the rich'

The chairman of the Republican National Committee says that it is simply "not true" that his party takes the side of the wealthiest Americans over the poor and middle class.

CNN's Candy Crowley asked RNC Chairman Reince Priebus Sunday about a recent New York Timespoll (PDF) which found that 69 percent of Americans believe Republicans in Congress favored the rich. Only 9 percent thought their policies favored the middle class and even less, 2 percent, thought congressional Republicans supported the poor.

"Certainly it's not true," Priebus argued. "And I think that it's a red herring, and I think that the president is doing a full time job of trying to play the game of class warfare."

"It's clearly working," Crowley asserted.

"Of course the party doesn't favor the rich," Priebus insisted. "But what the party does favor is reducing taxes on every single American out there, everyone watching. We favor reducing taxes and making sure that Washington is focused in on job creation, on cutting spending, on reducing the size of government."

"As long as you have Republicans, many of them up there saying, 'We need to make structural changes in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- and that would include cuts for some people and for providers in Medicare, as well as for patients in Medicare -- and by the way, we don't want to -- we want to lower taxes for everybody, including the rich,' that is not a perception," Crowley noted. "That's a fact."

"Well, because there's other ways of gaining more revenue, of course," Priebus replied. "If you reduce capital gains, more people invest and we've seen revenues increase."

Watch this video from CNN's State of the Union, broadcast Nov. 13, 2011.