THE FORMER speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich is virtually tied with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination, according to the latest Gallup national tracking poll. It shows Romney at 29 per cent and Gingrich at 28 per cent.
Gingrich is ahead in Florida, where the two men clashed in the 18th Republican debate on Monday night and where the next primary will take place on January 31st.
Rasmussen Reports shows Gingrich at 41 per cent and Romney at 32 per cent, while Public Policy Polling’s latest survey puts Gingrich at 38 per cent to Romney’s 32 per cent.
Their reversed fortunes following Gingrich’s win in South Carolina were evident in Monday night’s debate in Tampa, where Gingrich adopted the presidential air previously affected by Romney, who repeatedly attacked Gingrich, calling him a failed leader, a lobbyist and an influence peddler.
Only four nights earlier, Romney had said he regretted not having devoted more time to criticising US president Barack Obama and less to tearing down his rivals. But now he is desperate to stop Gingrich in Florida.
He said he had learned something from the South Carolina contest: “I’m not going to sit back and get attacked day in and day out without returning fire.”
Romney said Gingrich had spent the last 15 years on K Street, the address of Washington’s most influential lobbying firms. “And this is a real problem, if we’re going to nominate someone who not only has a record of great distress as the speaker but that has worked for 15 years lobbying.”
Gingrich responded: “I’m not going to spend the evening trying to chase governor Romney’s misinformation. I just think this is the worst kind of trivial politics.”
Romney argues that his business acumen makes him singularly qualified to run the country.
“They’re not sending somebody to Washington to manage the decay,” Gingrich said. “They’re sending somebody to Washington to change it, and that requires somebody who’s prepared to be controversial when necessary.”
Romney ridiculed Gingrich for attempting to portray himself as an insurgent, anti-establishment figure. “If you believe that line – that Newt Gingrich is the outsider that will shake things up in Washington – then I guess you believe that Bill Clinton didn’t inhale,” he said.
Hours before, at Romney’s demand, Gingrich had released one of his contracts with the US government-backed mortgage lender Freddie Mac, showing he was paid $300,000 (€230,000) for “consulting” in 2006.
Gingrich subsequently blamed Freddie Mac for helping to precipitate the housing bust in which millions of US homes have been foreclosed, one-quarter of them in Florida.
The contract revealed that Gingrich reported to Freddie Mac’s chief lobbyist, at the same time the mortgage lender “was costing the people of Florida millions upon millions of dollars”, Romney said.
Gingrich lamented the fact that the nominating process reached a point “where it gets unnecessarily personal and nasty”.
Recycling a pithy epithet from a debate in New Hampshire, Gingrich earlier in the day called Romney’s criticism of his record “such baloney . . . It used to be pious baloney, now it’s just desperate baloney.”
When Romney accused Gingrich of being a lobbyist, the former speaker interrupted, saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You jumped a long way over there, friend . . . The American people see through it.”
Gingrich’s Center for Health Transformation charges six-figure annual fees of the large healthcare corporations it represents and has accrued tens of millions of dollars in profits over the past decade.
Romney accused Gingrich of lobbying Congress to expand a Medicare prescription drug programme for the benefit of his clients. In a state with a significant percentage of old-age pensioners, Gingrich replied: “I’ll say this in Florida. I’m proud that I publicly advocated for Medicare part D. It saved lives.”
“You can call it whatever you’d like,” Romney shot back. “I call it influence peddling.”
In response to a hypothetical question about the death of the Cuban leader, Romney said the appropriate response would be to “thank heavens that Fidel Castro has returned to his maker”.
Gingrich was, as usual, more witty. “I don’t think that Fidel’s going to meet his maker – I think he’s going to go to the other place,” he said.
Knowing how unpopular the regime is among Florida’s Cuban population, Gingrich said he would use “every asset available, including covert operations”, to overthrow the regime.
The other two candidates, former senator Rick Santorum and Texas congressman Ron Paul, were almost reduced to spectators. The men will spar again at the 19th debate, in Jacksonville, Florida, tomorrow night.
Romney tax returns: Dublin listed among foreign locations
DUBLIN FEATURES alongside the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, and Bermuda in the foreign locations listed in Mitt Romney’s tax returns for 2010. The returns are for Mr Romney, his wife Ann, three family trusts and a charitable trust.
The Goldman Sachs US$ Liquid Reserves Fund, c/o BNY Fund Services Ltd, Guild Street, IFSC, Dublin, features in a number of the returns, including the return for Mitt and Ann Romney, where cash transfers totalling $1.5 million to the fund are recorded for the year.
The W Mitt Romney Blind Trust transferred $817,182 to the fund in 2010, while the Ann and Mitt Romney 1995 Family Trust transferred $621,282.
The couple also disclosed cash transfers totalling $139,625 to the Goldman Sachs US$ Treasury Liquid Reserves Fund, with an address at the offices of Matheson Ormsby Prentice, in Dublin.
The Ann D Romney Blind Trust and the Ann and Mitt Romney 1995 Family Trust had interests in Barracuda Investments Ltd, a company based in the offices of Mason Hayes and Curran, in Barrow Street, Dublin.
Barracuda is a subsidiary of GGC Credit Opportunities LLC, part of Golden Gate Capital private equity firm in San Francisco.
Barracuda invests in financial instruments and its latest filed accounts show a loss of $5.1m in the nine months to the end of 2010. It made both multimillion losses and multimillion gains on derivative financial instruments, according to the accounts. The company had no employees and used certain services from AIB International Financial Services Ltd, according to the accounts.
Mr Romney made a fortune from his involvement with the private equity firm Bain Capital and the returns show the Ann D Romney Blind Trust had an interest in Bain Capital HDS II (Luxembourg). This company in turn owns Bain Capital (Ireland) Integral Investors Ltd, at 53 Merrion Square, Dublin 2. The Luxembourg company is in turn owned by partnerships based in the Cayman Islands.
The latest accounts for Bain Capital (Ireland) show it lost $119m in 2010, having lost $107m the year before. However, it also recorded interest expense of $119m and $107m in 2010 and 2009, respectively.
The company issued $347m to two of the partnerships, which borrowed as much again from Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, and then used the money to buy notes, or bonds, in HD Suppy Inc, a leading US industrial supply company. – Colm Keena