Rick Tyler: Gingrich Backer Airs 'Black Genocide' Theory on MSNBC [VIDEO]

"I hear a lot of race-baiting, and I'm going to defend [Gingrich]," Tyler said.

"He has said over and over again, he's trying to get all Americans ahead. Latinos, African-Americans, all kinds."

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Tyler, who is white, went on to argue that the Republican Party had a "proud history" of fighting for equal rights during the Civil War, while the Democratic Party had fought for the rights of slaveholders.

'Democrats want to abort their babies'

But when Maddow and Sharpton challenged him on this point, the former Gingrich aide lost his cool.

"What about tonight?" Maddow countered, pointing out that Gingrich had specifically said America's welfare problem was getting black people off of food stamps, not the poor.

"There is a pattern here of, I think, obviously racially coded language that has nothing to do with the parties and the Civil War," Maddow concluded.

Al Sharpton agreed. "Newt Gingrich is the one who brought race up!" he said. "He's brought race in the campaign by name. You cannot then turn around and act like Rachel or I are bringing up race."

"I don't get it!" Tyler replied, and it was here that his argument escalated.

"The Democrats have failed in the public schools with African Americans," he asserted. "They abort their babies, they've done nothing to lift them out of poverty."

Just in case viewers missed it, he repeated his claims later: "Poor schools, poor neighborhoods, crime-ridden neighborhood, a destruction of the family, and the Democrats want to abort their babies."