Gingrich admitted he’s created an impression that he was echoing Democratic rhetoric. | REUTERS Newt: I crossed the line

SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Newt Gingrich signaled Wednesday that he believes his criticism of Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital is a mistake — and that he’s created an impression that he was echoing Democratic rhetoric.

Gingrich conceded the problem when pressed by a Rick Santorum supporter at a book signing here Wednesday.


“I’m here to implore one thing of you. I think you’ve missed the target on the way you’re addressing Romney’s weaknesses. I want to beg you to redirect and go after his obvious disingenuousness about his conservatism and lay off the corporatist versus the free market. I think it’s nuanced,” said Dean Glossop, an Army Reservist from Inman, S.C.

“I agree with you,” Gingrich said. “It’s an impossible theme to talk about with Obama in the background. Obama just makes it impossible to talk rationally in that area because he is so deeply into class warfare that automatically you get an echo effect. … I agree with you entirely.”

Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond issued a statement from the campaign Wednesday afternoon that pushed back on the reports of Gingrich moving away from his criticism of Bain.

“This issue at hand is neither about Bain Capital, private equity firms, nor about capitalism. It is about Mitt Romney’s judgment and character,” Hammond’s statement read. “It was Governor Romney’s decision to base his candidacy, in large part, on his background as a portfolio manager. Thus, it is entirely legitimate to ask questions about whether he is accurately presenting how he conducted himself during that career.”

Gingrich isn’t the only one backing away from the topic that consumed the conversation in the GOP race on Monday and Tuesday. Jon Huntsman also urged his fellow candidates to “cool it” on the attacks as he arrived in the state Wednesday.

“If you have creative destruction in capitalism –which has always been a part of capitalism – it becomes a little disingenuous to take on Bain Capital,” Huntsman said.

But Gingrich is the one who’s made the starkest change in his rhetoric. After abandoning promises of a positive campaign, Gingrich had been leading a multicandidate pile-on attacking Romney’s Bain record, starting during Sunday’s debate and continuing at campaign events Tuesday. Pulling back on the criticism now would be the latest abrupt shift in tactic from a candidate whose campaign has been marked by a constantly changing message and strategy.

In addition to providing another example of Gingrich’s erratic campaign style, the decision could put the former House speaker in a precarious spot: the pro-Gingrich super PAC Winning Our Future is set to begin a $3.4 million television airtime buy in South Carolina for a mix of ads, including some hitting Romney for his work at Bain. The group recently posted online a 27-minute long documentary it bought and intends to use as the basis for ads, which showcases people who lost their jobs when companies Bain was invested in closed. Through Tuesday, Gingrich had expressed support for the film.

Rick Tyler, a top advisor to Winning Our Future, said Gingrich’s comments on Wednesday will not prompt the group to take down the documentary, “When Mitt Romney Came to Town,” or otherwise alter its strategy.

“I’m going to let the viewers of South Carolina come to the conclusion, because this is about Mitt Romney’s record on jobs,” said Tyler, a former Gingrich aide, who briefly worked on his campaign last year. “It’s not about capitalism. It’s not about free enterprise. That’s a nice try, and they can try to hit back, but I’m not criticizing capitalism or free enterprise.”

Winning Our Future is legally barred from coordinating with Gingrich’s campaign. And Tyler would not say whether his group would refrain from criticizing Romney for his record at Bain if Gingrich publicly called upon the group to do so.

“I’m not going to answer the hypothetical,” he said. “I’m just going to take this day by day and moment by moment.”

After the event, Hammond argued the film was not actually specifically about Bain.

“It’s the decisions that Romney was making as CEO that are under review of public opinion,” Hammond said. “We’re not bringing Bain up; we’re responding to questions” prompted by the video.

Gingrich had started backing away from the Bain criticism at his first event in South Carolina on Wednesday morning, here fresh off a fourth-place finish in New Hampshire and hoping to revive his candidacy in the Palmetto State.

Gingrich concentrated most of his speech on President Barack Obama’s policies and promised to repeal “Obamacare,” the Dodd-Frank overhaul of the financial regulatory system and the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting standards law.

Gingrich swiped at Romney but spoke only broadly about his opposition to “crony capitalism” and never mentioned Bain Capital by name.

Some prominent Republicans have chastised Gingrich for going after Romney’s successful business, contending that he’s giving capitalism a bad name.

The Bain attacks weren’t generating much traction elsewhere in South Carolina when Rick Perry on Wednesday again trotted out the line about Bain’s “vulture capitalism” that he has been using in recent appearances in Lexington.

Perry’s made slapping around Bain the centerpiece of his effort here this week, saying that local businesses were “looted” by the Boston-based private equity firm.

For Foster White, a 52-year-old small-business owner who attended Perry’s event Wednesday morning, it doesn’t much matter.

“At some point, you create jobs by having some venture capital to invest,” he said. “If it’s all above the law, and he’s doing it fairly, it’s fine. Let’s say it was a terrible business, wouldn’t it be better to extract what you can and then go in and reinvest it? Or would it be better to let it self-implode?”

Kevin Thomas, chairman of the Fairfield County GOP, echoed this sentiment.

“The Bain Capital stuff, it’s turning some people off,” Thomas said in an interview in Ridgeway, S.C. “It’s going against conservatism. I don’t understand why they’re taking that tack…it’s not going to play down here. We’re conservatives. We’re capitalists. We want you to get rewarded for what you do. If you take some risk as a business owner, you should be able to get some gain.”

In an appearance on Fox News while taking a media victory lap Wednesday following his New Hampshire win, Romney predicted that the attacks on his Bain record would backfire.

“These attacks from the speaker and Rick Perry, you know, I expect that to come when people find their campaigns are having some difficulty, they look for a new course — I don’t think it worked,” Romney said. “I think the evidence from New Hampshire last night, where both the speaker and Rick Perry were both in single digits, suggests this kind of attack on free enterprise is simply not gaining traction for them.”

Romney adviser Kevin Madden went further, predicting that Gingrich and Perry will be hurt by their tactics in recent days and saying Romney’s happy to be in the position of defending free-market principles in a Republican primary.

The Bain attack “has backfired and will continue to backfire,” Madden told POLITICO.

Kenneth P. Vogel, James Hohmann, Emily Schultheis and Mackenzie Weigner contributed to this report.