Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is hitting Rival Mitt Romney in a new ad, with a voice-over that says at one point, “just like John Kerry, he speaks French, too.”
But it may not be Gingrich’s best line of attack, considering the former professor has a doctorate in European history from Tulane University.
Gingrich’s 1971 dissertation — “Belgian Education Policy in the Congo 1945-1960” — contains a multitude of sources in French in his bibliography.
In total, Gingrich relied upon 143 French-language sources to write his dissertation — including 18 “public documents,” 90 books, 33 published articles and 2 unpublished documents.
He also conducted 8 “private interviews” in Belgium during the course of his research, although the language that he used wasn’t specified in the bibliography. Belgium’s officials languages are French, German and Dutch.
Gingrich’s ad is called “The French Connection” and compares Romney to Massachusetts liberals Sen. John Kerry and former Gov. Michael Dukakis, both of whom unsuccessfully ran for president.
A Gingrich spokesman didn’t immediately return a request for comment from The Daily Caller about this irony.