This gets more bizarre the longer it goes on.

Florida has a large population of elderly retired Jews, and Newt Gingrich targeted them in his personal appearances by claiming that while he was governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney vetoed kosher food in state-supported old age homes, thus causing the retirees distress because of the disrespect to their religion.

Sounds pretty nasty, doesn't it? Especially to someone who keeps kosher and imagines all those poor elderly Jews having to choose between violating their faith by eating non-kosher food or starvation.

The real story? What actually happened is that the State of Massachusetts was going through a severe budget crunch and Governor Romney attempted to cut the state budget by ending expensive kosher kitchens in state-supported nursing homes and called for kosher meals to get prepared off-site and bused in to those locations where they were needed. It would have saved the state $600,000 per year, and still provided kosher meals to any Jew that wanted them. The Democrat-dominated Massachusetts legislature shot the proposal down.

Just listen to Newt's new radio spot and robo-call:

"vetoed a bill paying for kosher food for our seniors in nursing homes -- Holocaust survivors, who for the first time, were forced to eat non-kosher, because Romney thought $5 was too much to pay for our grandparents to eat kosher."

I'm upset about this not only because it gives the lie to Newt Gingrich's claim that he's a 'fiscal conservative' but because it's a disgraceful attempt to manipulate old people and slander another person with a deliberate falsehood.

Newt compounded his disgrace by denying responsibility. Seema Mehta of the Los Angeles Times:

Newt Gingrich denied any knowledge Tuesday of a robocall hitting Florida households that accuses rival Mitt Romney of forcing Holocaust survivors to eat non-kosher food -- though his campaign later acknowledged it was behind the attack.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said three times, speaking to reporters as he left Fred's Southern Kitchen. "Can't comment on something I don't know about."

Then he added, "You might check and see whether the accusation is true."

Rob Miller writes for Joshuapundit. His work has appeared in The Jerusalem Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The San Francisco Chronicle, American Thinker, Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace and other publications.