Rep. Paul Broun earns media scorn for comparing the need to hold the line on the government’s financial overextension to a decision to drop country club memberships.

Rep. Paul Broun (R, Ga.) was excoriated in the media for being out of touch with average Americans when, during an interview on July 27 with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell about the debt ceiling, he compared the need to hold the line on the government’s financial overextension to a decision to drop country club memberships.

“When someone is overextended and broke they don’t continue paying for expensive automobiles, they sell the expensive automobiles and buy a cheaper one. They don’t continue paying for country club dues, they drop out of the country club,” Broun told Mitchell.

Jonathan Capehart, a Washington Post columnist, said Broun’s remarks served as proof that newly elected officials supported by the Tea Party “think they know best” without a firm grasp of reality.

“And what of the people who are overextended and broke, but used their credit cards to pay for food, rent, medical expenses or other necessities?” Capehart asked. “What do they cut?”

A commentator on the www.sodahead.com website said Broun’s comment “managed to combine a stunning lack of understanding of us common folk with the worst analogy this side of Glenn Beck’s Norwegian Hitler youth camp.”Broun, Broun, an M.D. who was elected in July 2007 to serve Georgia’s 10^th Congressional District, located east of Atlanta, was among the Republicans who did not support House Speaker John Boehner’s debt-ceiling plan.