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Gingrich ad: Romney will "mislead, distort, and deceive" to win election
Updated 5:10 p.m. Eastern Time
Newt Gingrich's campaign is out with a new ad that claims Mitt Romney is willing to "mislead, distort, and deceive just to win an election."
The campaign said the spot, "What Kind of Man?," is being released today for air in Florida ahead of the state's January 31 primary.
The spot opens with a quote from Mike Huckabee before a narrator asks, "What kind of man would mislead, distort, and deceive just to win an election?"
"This man would. Mitt Romney. Romney said he has always voted Republican when he had the opportunity," the narrator continues. "But in the 1992 Massachusetts primary Romney had the chance to vote for George H.W. Bush or Pat Buchanan but he voted for a liberal Democrat instead."
The reference here is to Romney's claim in last night's presidential debate that he only voted for Paul Tsongas in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary in Massachusetts because there were no Republicans for him to vote for. ("I've never voted for a Democrat when there was a Republican on the ballot," he said.)
The narrator continues: "Romney said his investments in Fannie and Freddie were in a blind trust. But as reported in the National Journal, Romney earned tens of thousands of dollars from investments not in a blind trust."
Hotsheet explored this issue earlier today. The Romney campaign maintains the National Journal report is wrong, and sent over a statement from Romney's trustee, who said: "This investment, which has been sold, was not known to Governor Romney. It was held within Governor Romney's Charitable Remainder Unitrust, which I have been sole trustee of since it was established in 1996, and which I have managed on a totally blind basis since 2002."
More from the ad: "Romney denied seeing a false ad his campaign used to attack Newt Gingrich," the narrator says. "But Romney's own campaign paid for the ad, and Romney's own voice is on the ad approving its false content."
That one is at least partially true - perhaps Romney's worst moment in the debate came after he said he was unaware of the attack ad, and then had it pointed out to him that it came from his campaign and includes his voice at the end saying he approved the message.
As for whether the ad is "false": At issue is its claim that Gingrich called Spanish "the language of the ghetto."
Gingrich did not say that specifically of Spanish, though he seemed to imply it in a 2007 speech when he said, "We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto." Gingrich later essentially apologized for the comment - in Spanish.
The new Gingrich spot concludes with a narrator saying the following: "If we can't trust what Mitt Romney says about his own record, how can we trust him on anything?"
One more note on the ad: Huckabee put out a statement Friday afternoon to make clear he did not authorize his comments being included.
"Any use of an out of context quote from the Republican Presidential primary 4 years ago in a political ad to advocate for the election or defeat of another candidate is not authorized, approved, or known in advance by me," he said. "I have made it clear that I have not and do not anticipate making an endorsement in the GOP primary, but will support the nominee."
The spot is the latest foray in the increasingly nasty battle between Gingrich and Romney, who both recognize that the outcome in Florida has huge implications for their campaigns. A poll out this morning showed Gingrich trailing Romney by nine points in the state, though Gingrich leads in another new poll nationally.
The new Gingrich spot comes on the heels of a new video from Winning the Future, a super PAC backing Gingrich, promoting the group's new anti-Romney documentary. The group already released one such effort, "King of Bain"; this one, "Blood Money," is focused on a Massachusetts-based medical testing company called Damon Corp.
Winning our Future says Damon Corp. committed Medicare fraud by over-billing Medicare for blood tests. The documentary claims that the fraud continued for three years after Bain bought the company and while Romney was on the board. Over the course of those three years, Winning Our Future said, the company billed Medicare for $25 million in over-payments. The documentary claims that Romney pocketed $500,000 from the company after Bain Capital acquired and then sold it. (It's worth noting that the group's earlier effort included numerous false and exaggerated claims.)
The one-minute "trailer," shown above, will be on television in Florida for a short amount of time and will point people to the seven or eight minute documentary. The documentary will also be turned into a series of 30-second ads.
The Romney campaign responded to the "Blood Money" ad by charging that the Gingrich campaign is desperately reaching into President Obama's playbook with this latest line of attack.
"Newt Gingrich's SuperPac ads would make Michael Moore proud and have already struck a chord with President Obama's liberal allies," Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul said. "They have been thoroughly discredited by independent fact checkers and by respected Republicans like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio... Speaker Gingrich and his political cronies are desperate to distract from his record of failed and unreliable leadership, and voters won't be fooled."
With reporting by CBS News Senior Producer Caroline Horn.
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Brian Montopoli Brian Montopoli is the senior political reporter at CBSNews.com.
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