Gingrich Appears Confident Against Pelosi's Attacks
GOP presidential front-runner Newt Gingrich continued to shrug off Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's claims of a damning "secret" file.
In a Wednesday interview with NBC's "Today" Show, Gingrich dismissed the California congresswoman as living "in a San Francisco environment of strange fantasies and strange understandings of reality."
Responding to remarks made by Pelosi on Tuesday that a Gingrich presidency would "never happen," Gingrich said, "I have no idea what's in Nancy Pelosi's head. If she knows something, spit it out. Tell us what it is. I have no idea what she's talking about."
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Pelosi has insisted that she knows something that could change the presidential race completely.
The senior Democrat served on the ethics committee that investigated Gingrich for tax cheating and campaign finance violations. She told the Talking Points Memo blog last month that she and the media would one day "have a conversation about Newt Gingrich."
She continued, "I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff."
Republican strategist Ralph Reed has described Pelosi's attacks as "unfounded" and "baseless."
Pelosi's spokesman has since confirmed to Politico that the documents she is referring to are not secret at all, but instead readily available on the House's public record.
Reed asserted in a December interview with The Christian Post that Pelosi is simply trying to remind voters that Gingrich has a controversial history that few people remember.
Even that, he said, will not work.
"Elections are about the future, not the past," Reed said. "In politics you don't get to pick your opponent so Pelosi is just trying to drag up some dirt on her former colleague. Believe, me, Democrats don't want to run on their own record of the last three years so they're trying to bring up the past and it won't work to their advantage."
The former Republican House Speaker has already weathered a number of scandals many believed would ruin his chances at the White House.
After entering the race, Gingrich lost a number of staffers amid rumors that wife Callista was taking him away from the campaign and had run up debt at high-end jeweler Tiffany and Co. He continued with his campaign despite then reports that his campaign was teetering on the brink of closure and then surged to popularity in the months leading up to the Iowa Caucus.
The Gingrich campaign did not win the Iowa caucus or the New Hampshire primary. But it did regain momentum in South Carolina.
Allegations from ex-wife Marianne that the Georgia native wanted an "open marriage" with her and then mistress Callista seemed to threaten that momentum, but Gingrich fought off the stigma in a televised debate. When asked to respond to the allegation during a CNN debate, Gingrich denounced the media for its "destructive, vicious negative nature" and rejected the claim as false. His response garnered a standing ovation from South Carolina conservatives in the audience. Days later, he won the South Carolina primary.
Gingrich is currently leading in Florida polls ahead of the state's Jan. 31 primary.
