Republican Newt Gingrich, cranking up the campaign rhetoric, mocked White House rival Mitt Romney's plan for self-deportation of illegal immigrants as a "fantasy" on Wednesday and assailed President Barack Obama's tax ideas as "stupid." Gingrich, who has surged in recent polls to pull into a virtual tie with Romney in Florida after beating him last week in South Carolina, poked fun at Romney during a forum sponsored by the Spanish-language network Univision.
He ridiculed Romney's statement on Monday that he would support "self-deportation" of illegal immigrants rather than force the government to round them up and send them home, a stance that has drawn criticism as unworkable. "You have to live in a world of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and automatic, you know, $20 million a year income with no work to have some fantasy this far from reality," Gingrich said in a reference to Romney's fortune, revealed when he released his tax records earlier this week.
Romney has taken a tougher position on illegal immigration than Gingrich, including threatening to veto the Dream Act, a proposal that would allow some children of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. Momentum from a big win at the South Carolina primary election last week has propelled Gingrich into Florida, which holds its primary vote on January 31.
At an earlier campaign stop, Gingrich also criticised Obama's proposal in Tuesday's State of the Union speech to make those who earn at least $1 million a year pay a marginal tax rate of at least 30 percent. Gingrich said in Coral Springs that he was expecting clarification from the White House because the proposal was "so stupid even they couldn't defend it.
And he took on House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat who had appeared to suggest this week that she had information from an ethics probe into Gingrich in the 1990s that would prevent him from becoming president. "I think if she knows something, she ought to say it, and if she doesn't know something, she ought to quit saying it," Gingrich told Fox News on Wednesday. "But this is baloney."
Immigration is a big issue in Florida, where 11 percent of registered Republican voters are Hispanic and many are of Cuban descent. The state's primary on Tuesday is the next battleground in the Republican race to pick a challenger to Obama and will be a crucial swing state in November's general election.
Gingrich, the former House speaker, has said he would work to pass a version of the Dream Act that would allow children of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship if they join the military. "I am not for the whole Dream Act, but I am for the part that says if you are in the United States, even if your parents brought you illegally, if you are here, you have the same right to sign up in the military and earn citizenship," Gingrich said.
In a separate appearance at the Univision forum, Romney was told Gingrich had called him anti-immigration. "It is very sad for a candidate to resort to that kind of epithet. It is just inappropriate," he said. "There are differences between candidates on important issues but we don't attack each other with those kind of terrible terms. I am not anti-immigrant. I am pro-immigrant." "There were times when the president said if you send me this legislation, I will sign it. And I thought, well, aren't you the leader of the free world? Why don't you draft some legislation?" Romney said.