Mitt Romney continues to get hammered by Republicans for basically saying what a lot of them think, but doing so out loud and in public. This time it was Newt Gingrich's turn to get his shots in, with KLRU in Austin.
EVAN SMITH: So Governor Romney said yesterday now somewhat famously, that “the reason that the president won is because he gave gifts to minorities in the form of healthcare or to young people in the form of preferable college loan…”
NEWT GINGRICH: I am very disappointed…
EVAN SMITH: With Governor Romney saying that?
NEWT GINGRICH: With Governor Romney’s analysis, which I believe is insulting and profoundly wrong.
EVAN SMITH: Can you talk about that? Why is that?
NEWT GINGRICH: Well first of all, we didn’t lose Asian-Americans, because they got any gifts. He did worse with Asian-Americans than he did with Latinos.
EVAN SMITH: Right, seventy-three percent of Asian-Americans, seventy-one percent of Latinos.
NEWT GINGRICH: This is the hardest working and most successful ethnic group in America, okay. They ain’t into gifts. Second, it’s an insult to all Americans. It reduces us to economic entities who have no passion, no idealism, no dreams, no philosophy, and if it had been that simple, my question would have been “Why didn’t you out bid him?”
EVAN SMITH: Right, “You had the money…” you could be in the gift giving business if you had elected to be.
NEWT GINGRICH: He had enough billionaire supporters that if buying the electorate was the key, he could have got all of his super PAC friends together and said, “Don’t buy ads, give gifts.” It’d be like the northwest Indians who have gift giving ceremonies. He could have gone town by town and said, “Come here and let me give you gifts. Here are Republican gifts.” They could have an elephant coming in with gifts on it.
