Newt Gingrich, who ludicrously suggested firing union janitors in public schools and putting poor kids to work swabbing out the toilets instead, says that if Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee and ends up debating President Obama, ‘Obama is Going to Laugh at Him’.

Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich drew a clear distinction between himself and his rivals, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, and insisted in an interview with me today that he’s the best conservative candidate to beat President Obama.

He also fought back against the idea that he’s dividing up the conservative vote.

“I think as people look at his record and then imagine him debating Obama, Obama is going to laugh at him,” Gingrich said on “GMA.”

Meanwhile, yesterday “idea man” Gingrich helpfully explained that African-Americans need to stop being “satisified with food stamps.”

The fact is if I become your nominee we will make the key test very simple — food stamps versus paychecks. Obama is the best food stamp president in American history.  More people are on food stamps today because of Obama’s policies than ever in history. I would like to be the best paycheck president in American history.

Now there’s no neighborhood I know of in America where if you went around and asked people, would you rather your children had food stamps or paychecks, you wouldn’t end up with a majority saying they’d rather have a paycheck.

And so I’m prepared, if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.  And I’ll go to them and explain a brand new Social Security opportunity for young people, which would be particularly good for African-American males because they are the group that gets the smallest return on social security because they have the shortest life span.

I’m sure these kinds of points would be real winners in an Obama-Gingrich debate.

For Obama.