Elections

Gingrich calls out Rove super PAC, NRSC for abandoning Akin

Paul Conner Executive Editor
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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich criticized two major Republican campaign organizations for not continuing to back Republican candidate Todd Akin in the Missouri Senate race.

In an interview with The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas, Gingrich called out GOP “establishment types” — Crossroads GPS super PAC and the National Republican Senatorial Committee — for pulling funding from Akin, a congressman whose comments about “legitimate rape” caused a national uproar.

“If you applied the Todd Akin rule to Joe Biden, he’d be resigning the vice presidency once a week,” Gingrich said in Akin’s defense. “You have this bizarre double standard where Biden can say the weirdest things, and people just laugh and say, well, that’s just old Crazy Joe, you know; after all, he’s only vice president.”

“In Akin’s case, the establishment types saw a chance to get rid of a trouble-maker, replace him with somebody who’d be malleable, do it in the name of winning the election — and some of the things they said were quite extraordinary.”

“I mean, Karl Rove’s not-very-funny statement ‘If Akin gets murdered, don’t look for me,’ you know, I told Karl: in the age of Gabby Giffords, this isn’t funny, this isn’t a joke, you shouldn’t be able to say this in polite company.”

The former presidential candidate cited how the NRSC supported Charlie Crist instead of Marco Rubio in the Republican Florida Senate primary. “So let’s be clear, the Senate committee doesn’t always have good judgment,” he said.

“I got so angry, because I am a genuine grassroots populist, and I have a permanent suspicion of the establishment. And I got so angry at the way they were treating Todd that I agreed to go in. I think I was the first person to go in and campaign for him, and I’m delighted now that you have a number of other people campaigning for him: Jim DeMint has come in, [Mike] Huckabee has come in, [Rick] Santorum has come in.”

Gingrich predicted that Akin would defeat incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.

Watch the complete interview with Gingrich.

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