Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Herman Cain should not have joked about Anita Hill, during an interview Friday on Laura Ingraham's radio show.
Cain was at a campaign stop in Kalamazoo, Mich., on Thursday, when someone in the crowd mentioned Hill, the law professor who accused Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment 20 years ago. He laughed and said, "Is she going to endorse me?"
On said Friday, Cain followed-up and said, "It was no way intended to be an insult to Anita Hill or anybody else."
"I think if you look at the concerns we have about issues like sexual harassment, if you look at the tragedy at Penn State, if you look at how people feel in general about this kind of stuff, it's not something to be joked about," said Gingrich, according to Politico. He added that Cain "may well be innocent...but these are not things, I think, that you joke about."
Despite Gingrich taking the allegations seriously, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said he may have issues with women voters Friday on Fox News. "I think he'll have trouble with women, because I think women will excuse one or two issues, but he does have some significant issues when it comes to women and, I think, with women voters."
Perkins also said that he was giving Herman Cain the "benefit of the doubt" on recent sexual harassment allegations against the former Godfather's Pizza CEO because of the "liberal media."
Cain, meanwhile, lost nearly half of his support from women voters since October, according to a new CBS News poll. Gingrich garnered 19 percent support from men and 10 percent from women.
Gingrich has been married three times. Gingrich's first wife said she surprised him by discussing terms of a divorce while she was recovering from cancer surgery in 1980. Gingrich disputes the account. Gingrich has admitted that he had an affair with the woman who is now his third wife, Callista Gingrich, while married to his second wife and about the same time when he was attacking President Bill Clinton for his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. At the time, Gingrich was Speaker of the House.
