January 27, 2012

Jeb Bush: Gingrich efforts to tie Romney to Crist "ridiculous"

Newt Gingrich shouldn't chide Mitt Romney for having ties to former Charlie Crist staffers, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Friday.

Crist is disliked by many Republicans after leaving the 2010 GOP Senate primary and running as an independent. He lost to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. Some of Crist's political staff now work for Romney.

But Crist is not on the ballot, Bush said.

“That’s not a serious accusation,” Bush told National Review Online, citing Gingrich's criticism.

“Candidates win elections. I’m not a big Charlie Crist fan, as you recall, but these guys shouldn’t have that moniker attached to them, as if Governor Romney is part of some evil plot. That’s ridiculous.”

Before home builders, Gingrich proposes revamping the EPA

The morning after another combative Republican primary debate, the former House Speaker emphasized his pro-business, anti regulation platform -- and his connections to Ronald Reagan as a young congressman -- in a speech before a Hispanic business group in Miami.

Not mentioned during the speech -- at least by name -- his GOP rival: Mitt Romney.

Speaking before the influential Latin Builders Association: Gingrich emphasized his years as speaker, when Congress passed welfare reform and balanced the federal budget. And he cast himself as an early champion of Reagan's supply-side economics in the early 80s.

Indeed, he promised to go back to the supply side "playbook" again if elected president: lowering taxes on corporations and gutting the federal bureaucracy. Among his proposals: erasing the Nixon-era Environmental Protection Agency -- what he dubbed a "dictatorial job-killing agency" -- and recasting it as the "Environmental Solutions Agency."

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Romney to Obama on economy: "You're out of your depth"

Mitt Romney grew up in Michigan, and he had a stark message Friday for President Barack Obama as he visited the state: "Mr. President," Romney said, "forgive me for being blunt, but when it comes to economic affairs, you’re out of your depth." 

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor seeking the Republican nomination to run against Obama, is the son of former Michigan  Gov. George Romney. Michigan holds its presidential primary Feb. 28.

Mitt Romney offered his views in an "open letter" to Obama, who was speaking in Ann Arbor Friday morning.

"I recognize, of course, as do all Americans, that you inherited an economic crisis. But you’ve now had three years to turn things around. The record of those three years is clear. Your policies have failed, and not only in Michigan, but across the nation," Romney wrote.

He told Obama his promises "now ring hollow."

After all, Romney said, "If you have brought new ideas to Michigan for creating jobs, why have you waited three years to unveil them? Have you suddenly had a revelation, or is it because 2012 is an election year?

"Whatever the case, what you are offering Michigan now is too little, too late. What Michigan needs, and what the country needs, is not four more years of economic mismanagement and failed leadership, but a fundamental change in direction. I was born and raised in Michigan at a time when our state was the pride of America. With new leadership, Michigan can feel that pride once more."

Florida poll: Mitt Romney opens up a lead over Newt Gingrich

With four days left before Florida's presidential primary, a new poll finds Mitt Romney opening up a considerable lead over Newt Gingrich -- 38 percent to 29 percent.

The pre-debate poll compares to a Jan. 25 survey by Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University that showed the race in a statistical dead heat: Romney at 36 percent to Gingrich's 34 percent. The poll also had Texas Rep. Ron Paul at 14 percent, followed by former Penn. Sen. Rick Santorum at 12 percent.

The poll suggests that it's men who are changing their minds: In today's poll, men back Romney 36 percent to 29 percent, compared to backing Gingrich 37 percent to 33 percent just a few days ago. Romney continues to lead 40 percent to 30 percent among women, a number that's virtually unchanged.

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January 26, 2012

Mitt Romney's congressional team shadows Newt Gingrich

Mitt Romney's campaign has enlisted members of Congress to shadow Newt Gingrich at his events -- spinning Gingrich's congressional record to reporters -- and irritating the Gingrich campaign.

Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz showed up at Gingrich's tea party rally today in Mount Dora, telling reporters that few members of Congress want to share a ballot with GIngrich.

"He'd drag them down," Chaffetz said. "He really scares me and scares most members."

Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond confronted Chaffetz at the event, but the Huffington Post notes he was back shadowing Gingrich at a Jacksonville event later in the day. 

Asked whether he'd deploy his own observers, Gingrich said no: "He doesn't say anything worth rebutting," he said of Romney. "I would send someone if I thought it was a useful exercise."

Missouri Senate seat among most likely to change hands, Hotline says

Sen. Claire McCaskill remains the “most vulnerable Democrat” running for re-election, according to National Journal’s Hotline, a daily digest of political news.

Meanwhile, her campaign announced that she had raised $1.4 million during the last quarter of 2011 and had nearty $5 million in cash on hand.

In publicizing the number via Twitter, Campaign Manager Adrienne Marsh said it was McCaskill’s “best fundraising quarter yet.”

The latest Hotline monthly look at the battle for the Senate ranks Missouri as the third most likely seat to change party control. However, it noted that the Republican field was McCaskill’s “best friend” because each of her potential opponents has some drawbacks.

It said that Republicans believe former state Treasurer Sarah Steelman might be “unelectable” and that Rep. Todd Akin was a “lackluster fundraiser.” St. Louis businessman John Brunner, is an untested candidate, but Hotline said he is improving.

The GOP field has begun debates, although Brunner has so far declined to attend any. But overall, Republicans are encouraged that the public mood, high unemployment and McCaskill’s longstanding ties to President Obama will be a boon to their cause.

Democrats, meanwhile, hope that despite the president’s unpopularity in Missouri, the slow, but seemingly gradual improvements in the economy will make McCaskill’s road a little easier. But few believe her re-election will be easy.

Dole warns about Gingrich, saying he'd hurt state and local GOP hopefuls

If Republicans nominate Newt Gingrich, "it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state, and federal offices," former Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole, the GOP's 1996 presidential nominee, said in an "open letter" Thursday.

"Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself. He was a one-man-band who rarely took advice. It was his way or the highway," Dole said.

Dole was Senate leader while Gingrich was House Speaker from 1995 to 1999.

Dole recalled Gingrich's $300,000 penalty for ethics violations. "I know whereof I speak as I helped establish a line of credit of $150,000 to help Newt pay off the fine for his ethics violations. In the end, he paid the fine with money from other sources," Dole said.

He also blasted Gingrich's intellect.

"Gingrich had a new idea every minute and most of them were off the wall.  He loved picking a fight with Bill Clinton because he knew this would get the attention of the press," Dole recalled.

"In my run for the presidency in 1996 the Democrats greeted me with a number of negative TV ads and in every one of them Newt was in the ad.  He was very unpopular and I am not only certain that this did not help me, but that it also cost House seats that year.

"Newt would show up at the campaign headquarters with an empty ice-bucket in his hand—that was a symbol of some sort for him—and I never did know what he was doing or why he was doing it.

"In my opinion if we want to avoid an Obama landslide in November, Republicans should nominate Governor Romney as our standard bearer. He has the requisite experience in the public and private sectors. He would be a president we could have confidence in."

Newt Gingrich comes out swinging: "This is a campaign for the very nature of the Republican party"

Speaking in friendly territory -- before a tea party crowd of about 500 in Central Florida's bucolic Mount Dora -- the former House Speaker savaged Mitt Romney, the campaign ads that have been pillorying Gingrich across the state -- and his own Republican party.

Gingrich wasted little time in criticizing Romney as he took to the stage, decrying the "attack ads and all sorts of junk" and charging that Romney is hypocritical for attacking him for Freddie Mac when he has stock in it.

"He thinks we're going to back down, I don't think so," he said. 

"This is the desperate last stand of the old order, throwing the kitchen sink, hoping something sticks because if only they can drown us in enough mud -- raised with money from companies and people who foreclosed on Floridians," he said. He charged Romney and his super PAC ads were "paid for with the money taken by the people of Florida, by companies like Goldman Sachs."

But Gingrich, who had been surging in the Florida polls, said the race is now "very close" and that he believes the "weight of the negative ads" and what he called Romney's "dishonesty," had "hurt us some."

He called on the tea partiers to start working harder. "This group alone is big enough to start to turn this around," he said, declaring he wouldn't allow the "monied interests" to defeat him.

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January 25, 2012

Newt Gingrich defends Mitt Romney immigration ad that his campaign has yanked

Newt Gingrich today defended the anti-Mitt Romney immigration ad that his campaign pulled after Sen. Marco Rubio criticized it.

But Gingrich defended the ad, saying that Romney's own words prompted it: "When somebody says people are going to, in effect, self deport, remember who we're talking about," Gingrich told reporters. "We're talking about grandfathers and grandmothers who have children and grandchildren. The idea that somebody actually would think about deporting grandfathers and grandmothers, strikes me as fairly inhumane."

But he said the campaign pulled the ad because he has "great respect for Sen Rubio."

Beam me up Newt! Gingrich on the glories of space and grandiosity

Newt Gingrich drew a standing room only crowd to a hotel ballroom in the Space Coast town of Cocoa. The doors were shut after about 700 people arrived, a crowd so large that many stood behind the TV cameras, laughing as an emcee told the crowd to take a seat.

Gingrich gave a speech heavy on space — and light on politics (but for some bashing of bureaucrats) — acknowledging at the outset to being a space geek: "I'm old enough that I used to read missiles and rockets magazine," he said. He mentioned Romney just once, to say that Romney has poked fun at him for dreaming big about space.

He pledged to be a president who would deliver "relentless pressure to be faster ... more innovative" in the space industry.

"By the end of my second term," he said to laughter and cheers. "We will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American."

"Does that mean I'm a visionary? You betcha," he said to applause.

He noted he was "attacked the other night for being grandiose," and that the Wright Brothers dreaming of winged flight were grandiose, as was John F. Kennedy for wanting to get a man on the moon.

"Americans are instinctively grandiose," he said to applause.