As Barack Obama fights a recession and attempts to fix the auto industry, Republicans have taken the fight to the president.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Obama's plan to fix the economy through stimulus dollars and investing federal money into bankrupt companies like GM has "already failed."
"Bureaucrats managing companies does not work, politicians dominating the economy does not work," said Gingrich at a fundraising dinner with about 2,000 Republicans in attendance at the Washington Convention Center Monday night.
This is not the first time in recent weeks that Gingrich has taken a shot at the president. He called Obama's Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a 'racist,' before dialing back his comments.
Actor Jon Voight, the master of ceremonies at the GOP event, set the tone of the evening with a number of sharp jabs at the president.
"We are becoming a weak nation," said Voight, calling Obama a "false prophet." Republicans need to find their way back to power to free the nation from "this Obama oppression," he said.
Both Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, who followed Voight, seemed pleasantly surprised.
“I’m still just reveling that someone from Hollywood made a speech like that. I hope you’re going to be able to find work after this,” said McConnell. “I really enjoyed that.”
Senator John Cornyn of Texas told Bloomberg News that the speech was "refreshing."
The Obama administration didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by Bloomberg News.
A spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Ryan Rudominer, said the comments by Gingrich and other Republican speakers at the dinner showed they "would rather bank on failure than work with Democrats."
Congressional Republicans have "no new ideas," Rudominer said.
Meanwhile, Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin was making a similar argument in a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity.
"When you consider that the federal government is about $11 trillion in debt, and we're borrowing more to spend more ... it defies any sensible economic policy any of us ever learned through college," the former VP candidate said.
"[Spending in a recession] defies economy practices and principles that ya 'you gotta quit digging that hole when you are in that financial hole.'"
At one point Palin described Obama as "a very nice man," but warned voters to "pay attention to his policies."
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