Gingrich Dubs Romney ‘Wall Street Elite’

Romney Dubs Gingrich ‘Washington Elite’

Michael C. Bender and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Bloomberg

Newt Gingrich, accusing Republican presidential primary opponent Mitt Romney of being a “fundamentally dishonest” tool of Wall Street, pledged to stop big banking firms such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) from “rigging the game.”

Pressing his underdog campaign into the last full day before Florida’s primary election tomorrow, Gingrich spoke of running a White House that would “challenge the system head- on” and disrupt the “Wall Street elite.”

“To the degree they survive by rigging the game,” Gingrich said in an interview with Bloomberg News, “they have a lot more to fear. To the degree that they’re willing to be in a very investment-oriented, high-tempo, entrepreneurial world, they have more to gain.”

Gingrich said his plans, like eliminating the capital gains tax and repealing the Wall Street regulations of the Dodd-Frank Act, would benefit the banking industry. Gingrich also said he’d consider new legislative changes, including replacement of the Glass-Steagall Act, a 1933 law that increased bank regulations and was repealed in 1999. He said he would stop deals like the $13 billion payment Goldman Sachs received for American International Group, Inc. (AIG) investment guarantees after the bailed-out insurer received billions from the U.S. government.

Running Out of Cash

Gingrich is seeking to make up ground before Florida’s vote tomorrow. The former U.S. House speaker says he is down to about $600,000 after winning South Carolina’s Jan. 21 primary and is spending money as fast as he can collect it. Gingrich, 68, says he probably trails Romney in Florida ballots cast at early- voting sites and through the mail. Almost 535,000 Florida Republicans already have voted.

Romney, 64, a former Massachusetts governor, leads Gingrich by 42 percent to 27 percent among likely Republican primary voters, according to an NBC News-Marist poll released yesterday. The survey of 682 likely Republican voters was conducted Jan. 25-27 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

A Quinnipiac University poll released today shows similar results, with Romney over Gingrich by 43 percent to 29 percent. The telephone poll of 539 likely voters in the Republican primary was conducted Jan. 27-29 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

Gingrich is “looking for some kind of excuse,” Romney told voters yesterday in Hialeah, Florida, a largely Cuban- American community northwest of Miami. “But I’m afraid the real reason he hasn’t been successful connecting with the people of Florida is because of his message, and his failure to connect with the needs of the people in this state.”

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