TAMPA, Fla. — Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney used his first response at Monday night’s GOP primary debate in Tampa to attack Newt Gingrich’s record, a theme he kept up throughout the night.
“The speaker was given an opportunity to be the leader of our party in 1994,” Romney said when asked about the importance of electability in choosing a GOP nominee.
“And at the end of four years, he had to resign in disgrace.”
“In the 1990s, he had to resign in disgrace from his job as speaker,” Romney declared. “I had the opportunity to go off and run the Olympic Winter Games. In the 15 years after he left the speakership, the speaker has been working as an influence peddler in Washington. And during those 15 years, I helped turn around the Olympics, helped begin a very successful turnaround in the state of Massachusetts.”
Romney wasn’t quite done yet.
“The speaker — when I was fighting against cap and trade, the speaker was sitting down with Nancy Pelosi on a sofa encouraging it,” Romney went on.
“When I was fighting to say that the Paul Ryan plan to save Medicare was bold and right, he was saying that it was right-wing social engineering. So we have very different perspectives on leadership and the kind of leadership that our conservative movement needs, not just to get elected but to get the country right.”
Gingrich first responded to Romney’s shots by saying, “I’m not going to spend the evening trying to chase Gov. Romney’s misinformation.” (RELATED: Full election coverage)
“He just said at least four things that are false,” Gingrich said. “I don’t want to waste the time on them. I think the American public deserve a discussion about how to beat Barack Obama. … I just think this is the worst kind of trivial politics.”
Debate moderator Brian Williams tried to change topics and ask Romney about why he has not fared to0 well amongst self-described conservatives, but Romney had no interest in changing topics.
“I had a great record, as you know, in New Hampshire. The New Hampshire voters overwhelmingly supported me,” he said, before transitioning back to attacking Gingrich.
“But let’s go back to what the speaker mentioned with regards to leadership,” Romney said.
“I’ll point out that they’re accurate. But the truth is that the members of his own team, his congressional team, after his four years of leadership, they moved to replace him. They also took a vote, and 88 percent of Republicans voted to reprimand the speaker. And he did resign in disgrace after that. This was the first time in American history that a speaker of the House has resigned from the House.”
“I’ll make this other point,” Romney said, “which is we just learned today that his contract with Freddie Mac was provided by the lobbyist at Freddie Mac. I don’t think we can possibly retake the White House if the person who’s leading our party is the person who was working for the chief lobbyist of Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac was paying Speaker Gingrich $1,600,000 at the same time Freddie Mac was costing the people of Florida millions upon millions of dollars.”
Two slaps were too much for Gingrich not to respond.
“He may have been a good financier; he’s a terrible historian,” Gingrich said of Romney.
“The fact is the vote on the Ethics Committee was in January of 1997. I asked the Republicans to vote yes because we had to get it behind us. The Democrats had filed 84 ethics charges for a simple reason: We had taken control of the House after 40 years and they were very bitter.”
Gingrich continued, attempting to dispute Romney’s charges:
“And the fact is, on every single ethics charge of substance that was dismissed in the end, the only thing we did wrong is we had one lawyer written by letters — I mean had written one letter and the one letter was in error.
“I didn’t pay a fine; I paid the cost of going through the process of determining it was wrong. I left two years later. And, frankly, we were right to get it behind us because the tax cut that led to economic growth, the four balanced budgets, all came after that vote.
“So you have all this stuff just jumbled up. Apparently your consultants aren’t very good historians. What you ought to do is stop and look at the facts, and the fact is we won the House for the third time in 1998 but the margin wasn’t big enough. So I am the only speaker up to that point since the 1920s who had led the Republican Party to three consecutive victories.
“By the way, in 2006 when you chaired the Governors Association, we lost governorships. And in the four years that you were governor, we lost seats in the Massachusetts legislature. So I think as a party builder, the 20 years I spent building the House Republican Party stands pretty good as an example of leadership.”
Romney is trying to gain back the momentum in the GOP race after Gingrich defeated him in the South Carolina primary Saturday evening by double digits. In the two most recent Florida polls, Gingrich now holds a near-double digit lead.
Monday’s debate was sponsored by NBC News, the National Journal and the Tampa Bay Times. Florida’s primary will take place Jan. 31.