ROCK HILL, SC — During his acceptance speech in New Hampshire last night, Mitt Romney complained that some of his rivals were turning to the “bitter politics of envy” and trying to pit rich against poor in their attacks on him.
A reporter asked Newt Gingrich about that at an event here Wednesday. Gingrich called the charge a “smoke screen” and tried to tie Romney to the larger financial crisis.
“I think it’s funny that on the one hand he wants to run around touting his record, on other hand if anybody asks a question about his record, he hides behind an entire framework and to question the facts is to be anti-capitalist,” he said. “That is nonsense — baloney is the term I think I was using the other morning.”
His full answer:
I think it’s funny that on the one hand he wants to run around touting his record, on other hand if anybody asks a question about his record, he hides behind an entire framework and to question the facts is to be anti-capitalist. That is nonsense — baloney is the term I think I was using the other morning. The fact is, we have a right to know. We have a right to know what happened at Goldman Sachs, we have a right to to know what happened with trillions of dollars in New York. We have a right to know what happens when companies go bankrupt. I think the country would like to know. And if we’re going to run a presidential campaign on a record, the record has to be open to review. Now this is not anti-capitalism. That is the smoke screen of those who are afraid to be accountable.
