New Gingrich ad: Romney will 'mislead, distort and deceive' to win

Newt Gingrich is out with a new Florida ad that directly assails Mitt Romney's character, upping Gingrich's criticism that Romney cannot be trusted and playing off points of contention from Thursday night's debate.

The ad itself has not yet been posted online, but the Gingrich campaign released its script.

The ad opens with a snippet of a 2008 attack ad from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R). "If a man's dishonest to get a job, he'll be dishonest on the job," Huckabee says in the ad.

The ad then goes hard after Romney as a person.

"What kind of man would mislead, distort and deceive just to win an election? This man would be Mitt Romney," the ad's narrator says. "Romney said he has always voted Republican when he had the opportunity. But in the 1992 presidential primary Romney had the chance to vote for George H.W. Bush or Pat Buchanan, but he voted for a liberal Democrat instead."

The ad also goes after Romney's claims that he had no knowledge of stocks he owned in mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and his incorrect claim that an ad hitting Gingrich wasn't being run by his campaign. 

"Romney said his investments in Fannie and Freddie were in a blind trust. But as reported in the National Journal, Romney earned tens of thousands of dollars from investments not in a blind trust.

"Romney denied seeing a false ad his campaign used to attack Newt Gingrich. But Romney's own campaign paid for the ad ... Romney's own voice is on the ad approving the content," the ad closes. "If we can't trust Romney in a debate, how can we trust him in the White House?"

Romney's campaign fired back against the ad. "Newt Gingrich's desperate smears have already been called 'inflammatory' by Marco Rubio and 'ridiculous' by Jeb Bush," said Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul. "It is laughable to see lectures on honesty coming from a paid influence peddler who suffered an unprecedented ethics reprimand, was forced to pay a $300,000 penalty, and resigned in disgrace at the hands of his own party.  Speaker Gingrich is desperate to distract from his record of failed and unreliable leadership in an attempt to try and prop up his sinking campaign."

The ad comes during an increasingly nasty race between the two men. Romney and Gingrich have been going after one another's character more and more in recent days, and Thursday's debate showcased some of the antipathy they have toward each other.

It also airs as a new poll has Romney leading in the state by nine points.

—This post was updated at 12:10 p.m.

---