Gardner pandered on the issue to get into office and now is having to pay the price.  
The next thing he gets to eat is a tax cut for the wealthy that will either give the rest of us nothing or raise our taxes.  
His problem isn't that people are calling him on the right wing nonsense.  The problem is that the economic policies of his party are all designed to reward the rich at the expense of the rest of us.  At least they are only yelling.  In a less genteel age it would have been tar and feathers.