Mitt Romney continues feud with Newt Gingrich

Mitt Romney isn’t backing down from his call for rival Newt Gingrich to return the $1.6 million he earned as a consultant to mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

In an interview on Fox News on Wednesday morning, Romney renewed the call, and argued that it was Gingrich’s fault the money had become an issue.

“He said anyone who profited from Freddie Mac should give the money back,” Romney said. “Well, he profited $1.6 million from an agency that helped bring down the entire economy; he ought to give it back.”

(Actually, Gingrich suggested that politicians who supported the mortgage giant should be jailed.)

Gingrich and Romney have spent the past few days in a war of words over their respective private sector records, with Gingrich most recently suggesting that Romney, “give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain.”

(For more about Romney’s record at Bain, read this story from our colleagues Tom Hamburger, Melanie Mason and Matea Gold.)

Romney bristled at the reference to his Bain career, picking up on a point madeTuesday by columnist George Will, who wrote that Gingrich “faulted Mitt Romney for committing acts of capitalism.”

“He doesn’t understand the economy, if he doesn’t understand that sometimes businesses succeed and sometimes fail,” Romney said. “…To suggest that there is something un-American or something wrong about investing in enterprise that ultimately doesn’t succeed, bespeaks an extraordinary lack of understanding of how the economy works.”

Meanwhile, a pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, is up with a new ad Wednesday, warning that “Barack Obama’s plan is working: Destroy Mitt Romney, run against Newt Gingrich.”

The ad lists Gingrich’s “baggage” – fines for ethics violations, his work for Freddie Mac, his position that some illegal immigrants should not be deported, and the global warming ad he taped with Nancy Pelosi.

kim.geiger@latimes.com