Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney took a page out of the Chris Christie playbook on Thursday and berated an Occupy Wall Street activist for asking him how he would support less-wealthy Americans.

Romney was signing autographs outside his campaign headquarters in Charleston, South Carolina when a man asked, "What will you do to support the 99 percent, seeing as how you are part of the 1 percent?"

Romney quickly turned and pointed his finger towards the man's face.

"Let me tell you something," the candidate said angrily. "America is a great nation because we're a united nation. And those who try to divide the nation, as you are trying to do here and as our president is doing, are hurting this country seriously."

MSNBC host Martin Bashir suggested that the exchange could be a sign of things to come for the former Massachusetts governor.

"Is it possible that a candidate worth close to a quarter of a billion dollars, who refuses to release his tax returns and who reportedly has millions stashed away in the Cayman Islands, is having trouble connecting with the common man?" Bashir wondered.

Update: MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell has called Romney's handling of the exchange "Reagan-esque"

"He took that on and reframed it and showed an aggressiveness, it looked, with all due respect, almost Reagan-esque, going after a protester and making it his case," she declared.

"You say, reframing; I say, he built a straw man," National Journal's Ron Fournier replied. "That protester didn't say that he thought Cuba and Russia had a better economic system. What he said is that Romney is part of the 1 percent, which is true."