After denying it earlier, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich admitted on Friday that a gun rack could be installed in Chevrolet's electric Volt, but he insisted there would be no place to put a dead deer.
At a campaign event in Savannah, Georgia, the former House Speaker told a crowd of less than 100 supporters that President Barack Obama's energy policies would lead to higher gas prices.
"Somebody in Nashville come up to me the other day and said they know what Obama's 9-9-9 plan is and they wanted me to share it with Herman Cain," Gingrich explained. "And I said, 'What are you talking about?' And they said, 'He wants us to pay $9.99 a gallon.'"
Since late February, the Georgia Republican has has been promising to bring gas back down to $2.50 per gallon because "you can’t put a gun rack on a Volt."
But within a day of first making that remark, one gun advocate released a video demonstrating how he installed a gun rack in his electric car.
"There's a YouTube video of a guy in Atlanta who owns a Volt who put a gun rack in the trunk," Gingrich confessed to his supporters in Savannah on Friday. "But a friend of mine from Camilla, Georgia, who's a hunter, said, 'Yeah, but where does the deer go?'"
"I'm not anti-Prius and I'm not anti-Volt," the candidate continued. "I am for the principle that if you go to work and you earn a living and you have after-tax income, it is your money and you ought to be allowed the buy the kind of car that you want, not the kind that Barack Obama wants."
For his part, President Barack Obama said last week that he was a fan of the Volt, noting that he had the opportunity to sit in one at GM’s Hamtramck plant in Detroit.
“Secret Service wouldn’t let me drive it,” he joked. “But I liked sitting in it. It was nice. I bet it drives real good.”
“And five years from now when I’m not president anymore, I’ll buy one and drive it myself!”
Watch this video from CNN, broadcast March. 2, 2012.
