think about it. ann coulter came out yesterday eviscerating. there were stories all over drudge eviscerating him from conservatives, tom delay came out, kicked him around, said he wasn t a conservative. reagan administration officials came out, kicked him around. bob dole came out, kicked him around. it wasn t just the washington republican establishment like bob dole. it was the wide specter of a republican party that for better or for worse, newt gingrich brought to the majority of congress for the first time in a generation. i think that would weigh heavy on anybody and may have got him off of his game last night. well, actually, the piece you re writing for politico basically characterizes what you saw last night and all the peaks and valleys of his career. because there s not just ups, there s up and wide swings to down, and we re literally watching that unfold before our
just roll it. bob dole to suggest that governor romney is more reagan-like than i am is an act of total fantasy. at number three, wrestling over reagan. they ve got a great sense of humor, but also a cynical attitude toward their system. mitt romney and newt gingrich campaigning this week in florida competed for the right to ronald reagan s legacy. i campaigned with him in 1980, helped him for eight years while he was president, i made a movie about him. a pro-romney super pac pointed out in the ad that the admiration may not have been mutual for president reagan. from debates, you d think newt gingrich was ronald reagan s vice president. but in his diaries, he mentioned him only once. gingrich tried to get a piece of jfk s mantle by promising a moon shot. we will have the first permanent base on the moon. and it will be american. the former house speaker answered criticism he took from another house speaker, nancy pelosi. she lives in a san francisco
you know it didn t get there by itself. the campaign has orchestrated 80% of this. and it not only dominated the news cycle in florida the last few days, but discombobulated gingrich. when he gets attacked he gets ind indignant and completely off his game. and romney just was a perfect counter point to that, didn t get drawn into his own attacks, but chose the moments where he wanted to engage. are you saying mitt romney s a turtle on a fence post? a lot of what we ve seen has been orchestrated by a little headquarters on the north end up in boston. and one of the brilliant moments romney had yesterday was when the topic wolf blitzer brought up the topic of who s more like reagan. and romney s like, yeah, gingrich is closer to reagan, he stepped back, didn t fight on it. brilliant and part of an overall
package of why romney had such a good night and why he s well positioned. by the way, they knew that was coming. of course. they knew it was coming. and in fact, i talked to somebody a couple of days ago who said gingrich is running around talking about how he s reagan despite the fact he trashed reagan time and again on the house floor. we re not going there. you know what s interesting about this, willie, is this debate which had a pro-romney crowd. yep. you would have thought it may have been in sarasota or maybe in southwest florida where romney-type voters are. it was in jacksonville, which is that s the south. the stretch from jacksonville to pensacola should be gingrich territory. i bet you, though, that s another turtle put on a fence post. i bet the romney campaign finally figured out, let s not just see who shows up good for them, because they haven t served him well up until
next three weeks think about newt went out of new hampshire and we all mocked him and was sure his campaign was over. he went to south carolina and e he he was in a sweet spot. he was the outsider, and jeff, he s going to have three, four weeks now in february to plot and scheme to win a series of races on super tuesday across the southeast. and this is the this is the setting sin of people like us. it happens all the time. you linear extrapolate. you assume because something s going this way, it can t change. we ve seen this campaign a change half dozen times. speaking of reagan, 1976, he loses the first five primaries, written out of the race. it s over. gives half hour foreign policy speech, wins the north carolina primary and almost defeats jerry ford. so the notion that newt gingrich is dead given this year and the dynamic of the republican party and the still underlying