Another Democratic president in distress seems to be getting a boost from Newt Gingrich.
Fifteen years after Gingrich?s bombastic overreach as House Speaker helped Bill Clinton bounce back to win re-election in 1996, a mellower Gingrich is providing President Barack Obama with something the incumbent sorely needed: A credible top-tier Republican to join him in lambasting Mitt Romney as a flip-flopper.
Continue ReadingJust a few weeks ago, Obama 2012 senior adviser David Axelrod, architect of the party?s ?Mitt-has-no-core? strategy, was practically shouting at the TV while watching yet another debate in which the GOP field attacked Obama instead of their nominal - and vulnerable - frontrunner.
But that was before Gingrich abruptly joined Team Obama this week in a tag-team attack of sorts on Romney. Gingrich mocked the former Massachusetts governor on CNN for running ?to the left? of Ted Kennedy in the 1990s and didn?t take issue with Democratic National Committee ads pointing out Romney position shifts on abortion, immigration and health care reform, as ?legitimate.?
Romney, faced with perhaps his biggest intraparty threat yet, escalated the fight, describing Gingrich as ?a lifelong politician,? incapable of understanding the economy as well as someone who had been in business.
And that seemed to encourage Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman to get more aggressive with Romney ? exactly the kind of internecine brawl Obama and Co. have been waiting months to see.
?What?s most important is they are not just attacking each other, but what they are attacking each other on ? the same stuff Obama would be attacking Mitt on,? said Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, an adviser to Hillary Clinton?s 2008 campaign.
?Mitt and Newt are fighting over who is the biggest flip-flopper, and that?s to the advantage of Obama and to our candidates too,? he added. ?They aren?t fighting over ideology, like who?s the most conservative, they are hitting each other on character? That?s why it?s so valuable.?
A poll of Florida voters released Thursday by Democratic pollster PPP found Gingrich with a 30-point lead over Romney, and illustrated the potential benefits to Obama of his sudden emergence: In head-to-head match-ups, Obama is virtually tied with Romney. But he would beat Gingrich by a 50-to-44 percent margin, well outside the poll?s margin of error.
?If the Newt surge persists over the next few months the biggest winner is going to be Barack Obama,? PPP?s staff concluded in their summary. ?If Mitt Romney?s the Republican nominee, Obama?s in a lot of trouble? in Florida.
One Obama operative in a battleground state thinks the Gingrich offensive will have a less dramatic impact but is still ?a pretty important development.?
One result, the operative speculated, is that it may encourage the media to take a tougher tone after months of focusing on more colorful frontrunners with faster expiration dates.
Interviews like the one conducted Tuesday by Fox?s Bret Baier - which elicited a tense response from Romney - might in turn encourage Texas Gov. Rick Perry to empty his war chest to run negative ads, in a last-ditch attempt to win January?s Iowa caucuses. ?Will we see a Rick Perry suicide mission after the Newt surge?? he asked.
On Thursday, Gingrich opted for a kindler, gentler approach. When POLITICO asked his spokesman J.C. Hammond to talk about the ?shots? Gingrich took at Romney, he emailed, ?What shots?? and didn?t answer any more questions.
When the Washington Post reporter asked Gingrich if he planned to keep up the pressure on Romney, he replied, ??No. I?ve gotten this far because I?ve stayed totally positive, and I?ve stayed focused on Barack Obama.?
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