By Marc Caputo, McClatchy Newspapers –
MIAMI — The close, volatile Republican presidential campaign exploded in Miami’s Cuban-American community on Wednesday as Newt Gingrich pulled a controversial Spanish-language immigration ad after Sen. Marco Rubio bashed it as out of bounds.
The radio ad, featuring a snippet of a Fidel Castro line, described Mitt Romney as “anti-immigrant” for his hard-line stances, which mirror those of Rubio and many Republican leaders.
“This kind of language is more than just unfortunate. It’s inaccurate, inflammatory, and doesn’t belong in this campaign,” Rubio told The Miami Herald when asked about the ad. He is neutral in the GOP presidential race.
“The truth is that neither of these two men is anti-immigrant,” the Florida Republican said. “Both are pro-legal immigration, and both have positive messages that play well in the Hispanic community.”
The unexpected criticism from the nation’s leading Latino Republican underscored the difficulties of campaigning on immigration in Miami’s Cuban-exile community, which accounts for just under three-quarters of the Republican vote in the largest county of the nation’s largest swing state.
A new poll of Florida Latinos shows Gingrich losing badly to Romney among them, though they’re virtually tied among all Republicans statewide. Both trail President Barack Obama by double digits.
After Rubio’s criticism, Gingrich’s campaign said it would pull the ad out of “respect” for Rubio, who is considered a possible running mate for both candidates. His campaign then announced it would edit out the “anti-immigrant” line and re-run the ad.
Romney called the ad “Outrageous. Outrageous. My dad was born in Mexico, came here at age 5. It’s an outrageous charge from Newt Gingrich. I’m pro-immigration. I’m pro-legal immigration.”
Gingrich earlier defended the ad’s language in an interview with the Miami CBS affiliate. Gingrich specifically took exception with Romney’s call at a Monday debate for people to deport themselves if they’re here illegally.
“I think he’s amazingly insensitive to the realities of the immigrant community — his whole concept of self-deportation,” Gingrich said. “I’ve not met anyone who thinks it’s in touch with reality. People aren’t going to self-deport.”
But his own spokesman had told a New Hampshire paper that, as a consequence of Gingrich’s immigration plan, “it’s likely the vast majority of them (illegal immigrants) would self-deport.”
The Florida race is almost dead even — 36 percent for Romney, 34 percent for Gingrich — according to two new polls from Quinnipiac University and CNN-Time. The polls indicated Gingrich was surging after winning South Carolina’s primary on Saturday, but most of the polling was done before Monday night’s Florida debate, when Romney mounted a sharp attack on Gingrich.
Romney, too, found himself the target of his own words on the Florida campaign trail, where he has attacked Gingrich as an “influence peddler” because he was paid as a consultant for mortgage giant Freddie Mac, which is implicated in the housing crash and foreclosure crisis gripping one in every 360 Florida homes.
Turns out, some of Romney’s campaign advisers were lobbyists for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to The Associated Press and the Daily Caller conservative website.
Also, AP and the Democratic group American Bridge 21st Century pointed out that one of Romney’s investments yielded $500,000 from Fannie Mae.
Romney said there’s “absolutely” bipartisan blame for the housing crisis, which started during the presidency of George W. Bush.
“Part of it was Republicans. Part of it was Democrats,” Romney said. “This idea that everybody has to own a home — that we’re going to give mortgages to people who can’t pay them back — that is a primary reason that we got in the economic stress that occurred within the housing market.”
Later, at an event in Brevard, Gingrich was asked about Romney surrogate John McCain’s criticism of him.
“What you have right now is the entire establishment in panic mode, running and saying whatever comes to their mind next,” Gingrich said.
He said that the Romney campaign attacks on his ties to Freddie Mac were “so funny” because “your candidate has a Swiss bank account, he has Cayman Islands accounts. He owns stock in Fannie and Freddie. … One of his senior advisers is another lobbyist for Freddie Mac. … Someone who stands up and says, ‘Let me attack you on Freddie Mac, and oh by the way, I didn’t tell you I own stock.’ ”
