blasted Romney for taking over companies and laying off "thousands of workers."

"I think he managed companies and he bought and he sold and sometimes people lost their jobs," the Arizona senator explained at a January 2008 debate.

On Sunday, Fox News host Chris Wallace asked McCain, who is now campaigning for Romney, if he was engaging in the same kind of "class warfare" that he has accused President Barack Obama of for attacking Romney's Bain record.

"This is the free enterprise system," McCain insisted. "The only place in the world that I can recall where companies never failed was the old Soviet Union. This is what investors do in the free enterprise and capitalism system."

"And, yes, the free enterprise system can be cruel," he added. "But the problem with this administration is that small businesses have been the ones that have suffered the most, the kind that need investors, the kind that don't need the hundreds of pages, the thousands of pages of regulations that continue to plague them and have them continue to hold back on hiring and investment."