Barney Frank to Newt Gingrich: Losing Is Making You Mouth Off

Newt Gingrich's defense of Wall Street from the Occupy protests ended with him calling for Rep. Barney Frank to be put in jail -- a suggestion the Massachusetts congressman found "very odd."

"If you want to put people in jail, you ought to start with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd," Gingrich declared during a Bloomberg-Washington Post debate on Tuesday night. He and many Republicans around a table claimed it wasn't Wall Street that had screwed up the financial system, and so protesters were blaming the wrong people.

"All I am saying is, everybody in the media who wants to go after the business community ought to start by going after the politicians who were at the heart of the sickness that is weakening this country," Gingrich said after moderator Charlie Rose double-checked on whether the former Speaker really meant to imply he wanted people arrested.

Frank took a swipe right back at Gingrich in a statement reported byTalking Points Memo.

"Struggling to stay ahead of Michele Bachmann in the polls is unsettling him so he talks even sillier than he sometimes does," Frank said of the "self-styled intellectual leader of the free world."

Frank pointed out that it was actually Republicans who controlled the House during the financial crisis, with the GOP in power from 1995 to 2007 except for a brief moment.

Bachmann also attacked the federal government during the debate as the cause of the nation's financial problems, and she repeatedly said the new Dodd-Frank regulations on Wall Street should be repealed. Herman Cain famously said the protesters should blame themselves for being out of work, and not rich. And he stood by those comments during Tuesday's debate.