Gingrich Renews Criticism of Romney's Record at Bain COLUMBIA, S.C. - Maybe it was the debate talking. Acting feisty all day after a much-praised performance in Monday's Republican debate, Newt Gingrich returned on Tuesday to a line of attack he has muted in recent days: Mitt Romney's record as a leveraged buyout specialist at Bain Capital. In the unusual setting of a business conference, Mr. Gingrich offered a full-throated restatement of his criticism that some of Mr. Romney's deals exploited companies at the expense of workers so Bain could reap outsize profits. His earlier criticisms were fiercely condemned by leading Republican outlets, including the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, and even some top advisers to Mr. Gingrich have counseled him to back away. Over the past two days, the word "Bain" scarcely passed his lips. But when a meeting moderator asked him to "explain to this audience why your criticism of Mr. Romney's business background is a fair one," Mr. Gingrich seemed to rise to the bait like a hungry trout. "I think this is one of the bigger acts of baloney in modern times," he said, referring to the attacks on his earlier criticism. Mr. "Raising a question of judgment about a particular person" who has made his job-creation record in business "one of his two major claims to be president is hardly an attack on capitalism." "The Bain model," he continued, "is to go in at a very low price, borrow an immense amount of money, pay Bain an immense amount of money and leave. I'll let you decide if that's really good capitalism. I think that's exploitation. Mr. Gingrich was once himself an adviser to a pioneer corporate buyout specialist, Theodore J. Forstmann, and some commenters have accused him of a double standard. But he drew a distinction between some of Mr. Romney's deals and those of Mr. Forstmann, who died recently. Venture capital is when you go in, you put in your money and you stick it out. "Teddy took over Gulfstream; he found it was much worse than he thought," Mr. Gingrich added. He went out and borrowed $1 billion, went down personally and became C.E.O. "The point is, I'm proud of real capitalists," he said. But I'm not proud of people who go in, borrow the money, leave the debt behind and walk off with all the profits. Supporters of Mr. Romney have called such remarks a blanket attack on free enterprise, the kind to be expected from the political left. A scathing documentary about four companies that Bain acquired, which is being used to attack Mr. Romney by supporters of Mr. Gingrich, has been shown to be riddled with errors. In Monday's debate, Mr. Romney said businesses his private equity firm invested in have ended up creating a total of 120,000 jobs. "Some of the businesses we invested in weren't successful and lost jobs,"" he said. And I'm very proud of the fact that we learned from the experience. We invested in well over 100 different businesses. And the people have looked at the places that have added jobs and lost jobs, and that record is pretty much available for people to take a close look at.