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Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich declared Thursday that he would work to abolish federal judges if he didn't agree with their "anti-American" or "dictatorial" rulings.

At a GOP debate in Sioux City, Iowa, Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly noted that at least two conservative former attorneys general had blasted Gingrich's "dangerous" and "totally irresponsible" plan because it would alter the balance of powers.

"It alters the balance because the courts have become grotesquely dictatorial, far too powerful," Gingrich admitted. "I've been working on this project since 2002 when the Ninth Circuit court said that 'one nation under God' is unconstitutional in the Pledge of Allegiance. And I decided that if you had judges that were so radically anti-American that they thought 'one nation under God' was wrong, they shouldn't be on the court."

"Like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln and FDR, I would be prepared to take on the judiciary if, in fact, it did not restrict what it was doing," he added.

As for those conservative former attorneys general, Gingrich wanted to know if they had studied "Jefferson, who in 1802 abolished 18 out of 35 federal judges?"

"I would suggest to you, actually as a historian, I may understand this better than lawyers, and as lawyers, those two attorneys general are behaving exactly like law schools which have overly empowered lawyers that they can dictate to the rest of us," he insisted.

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Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain claimed Sunday that the Occupy Wall Street protests going on in New York City and across the country were a conspiracy designed to help President Barack Obama.

"The proof is quite simply the bankers and the people on Wall Street didn't write these failed policies of the Obama administration," Cain told CBS' Bob Schieffer. "So it's a distraction. So many people won't focus on the failed policies of this administration."

"You're saying that these people all got together to draw attention away from Barack Obama?" Schieffer asked.

"We know that the unions and certain union-related organizations have been behind these protests that have gone on, on Wall Street and other parts around the country. It's coordinated to create a distraction so people won't focus on the failed policies of this administration," Cain replied.

"It's anti-American because to protest Wall Street and the bankers is basically saying you are anti-capitalism. The free market system and capitalism are two of the things that have allowed this nation and this economy to become the biggest in the world."

Also appearing on CBS, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich offered his own take on the protests.

"The sad thing is is this a natural product of Obama's class warfare," Gingrich declared. "We have had a strain of hostility to free enterprise. Frankly, a strain of hostility to classic America starting in our academic institutions and spreading across this country. I regard the Wall Street protest as a natural outcome of a bad education system, teaching them really dumb ideas."

October 22, 2008 News Corp