With the latest debate (what is this, like 1,000?) in the books, Glenn spent some time analyzing a heated exchange between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Mitt attacked Newt for his connections to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while Newt decided to go after Mitt for making money in the private sector. Clearly, one of this arguments adhered to conservative principles and one showed a man willing to pocket thousands from a corrupt, bloated, government organization. Wonder who won that exchange?
Mr. Speaker, you were on this stage at a prior debate, you said you were paid $300,000 by Freddie Mac as a historian, as an historian. They don't pay people $25,000 a month for six years as historians.,” Romney said.
Romney continued that over the years that added up to be close to 1.6 million and that he was not a historian, as Gingrich has claimed, but a consultant. Furthermore, he was hired by a lobbyist for Freddie Mac.
“You also spoke publicly in favor of these GSEs, these government sponsored entities, at a very time when Freddie Mac was getting America in a position where we would have a massive housing collapse. You could have spoken out aggressively. You could have spoken out in a way to say these guys are wrong, this needs to end, but instead you were being paid by them. You were making over a million dollars at the same time people in Florida were being hurt by millions of dollars. We're talking about Freddie Mac,” Romney continued.
And what is Newt’s response?
“What's the gross revenue of Bain in the years you were associated with it? What's the gross revenue?” Gingrich asked.
Why was he so quick to attack capitalism?
Stu said, “He acts as if Mitt Romney's problem with the Fannie/Freddie thing is how much money he earned. It's not. It's the fact that you earned that much money from a government entity.”
Romney fired back, “We don't do any work with the government, I didn't have an office on K Street, I wasn't a lobbyist. I have never worked in Washington.”