Newt Gingrich lashes at opponents airing negative spots, without naming names
HIAWATHA, Iowa – Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich called on his supporters last night to demand that all negative ads targeting him be removed from the airwaves.
But to whom should voters address such demands?
To that obvious question, the former House speaker professed to not know the answer. Calling for assistance from his press spokesman, R.C. Hammond, in the back of crowd at a town hall event, he got a response.
The spokesman said Mitt Romney.
And so it went as Gingrich, in two appearances in eastern Iowa, sought to deflect the negative TV barrages without explicitly counterattacking from the stump.
It’s a consequence of being the front-runner in Iowa and national polls, yet not yet having enough money and organization to hit the airwaves with his own advertising.
So for now Gingrich is calling for a halt to negativity while obliquely pushing back at his opponents.
“It’s very disappointing to see some of my friends who are running putting out so much negative junk,’’ he told a crowd at an earlier campaign stop in Davenport.
Spots highlighting the more than $1.6 million in consulting fees Gingrich earned from the government-backed mortgage giant Freddie Mac are being aired in Iowa and Florida by a super PAC called Restore our Future, which is operated by Romney supporters.
Gingrich said at the town hall in Hiawatha, a suburb near Cedar Rapids, that an unnamed enemy (hint: Romney) was falsely saying he knew nothing of the activities of the “super PAC’’ running the negative ads.
“That’s just baloney,’’ Gingrich said, in his most strident reference to his unnamed assailant.
Opponents Ron Paul and Rick Perry are also running advertisements on Iowa TV slamming slam Gingrich, under their own names.
In one, Paul accuses Gingrich of “serial hypocrisy.’’
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