Mondale: Gingrich comments 'despicable'

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 (UPI) -- Former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale Tuesday ripped into former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, saying his comments about the president were "despicable."

Gingrich tried to suggest that President Barack Obama was outside the American mainstream, saying, "What if the president is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior can you begin to piece together his actions?"

"It's despicable," Mondale said on The Diane Rehm Show on NPR in Washington. "The president has grown up in America. He was in Indonesia as a child, but the rest of his life has been here. He's gone to great American schools; he's worked on the streets of Chicago. That's why he got elected: people knew him. To talk as though he is some sort of alien from somewhere else who knows nothing about America is an outrage and Gingrich is good at that."

Last week, a former Republican House member also blasted Gingrich for telling fellow Republicans that Democrats are "the party of food stamps."

"At some point, people will learn to stop taking Newt Gingrich seriously," former Rep. Mickey Edwards, R-Okla., told Politico. "Newt is utterly unconcerned with the welfare of the country ... . He cares about (a) Newt and (b) power for Newt."

The former speaker also drew fire from conservative MSNBC commentator Joe Scarborough, a former GOP congressman from Florida.

"The same politician who once saw himself as a latter-day Winston Churchill -- sent by God to save Western civilization -- now gets rich off political hate speech," Scarborough said in an opinion piece in Politico.