In fairness to Newt, there was never any hard evidence that a “nonaggression pact” was being considered. It was just two anonymous sources … plus, er, the candidate himself telling Laura Ingraham “absolutely, of course” when she asked if there was any chance of the two “aligning together” to defeat Romney.

Change of plans:

“If you think of us as partners, he would clearly in historical experience have been the junior partner,” Gingrich said Thursday on the campaign trail. “He’s not a bad person, I want to be clear about this, but I don’t know that he has any track record of being able to organize a large-scale campaign.”

He also accused Santorum of not having the organizational experience to govern on a large scale.

“I don’t think you want to hire somebody to get through the election, you want to hire somebody to actually change Washington,” he said.

Why is a guy who got elected twice to the Senate as a hardcore social conservative in a big purple state and who later ended up as number three in the Republican caucus somehow suspect in terms of running effective large-scale campaigns? And why is he being treated that way by another candidate who’s never won a statewide race, whose own presidential campaign famously fell apart over the summer before it finally became his turn to be the “Not Romney” du jour, and who finished 10 points behind him in Iowa?

Says Guy Benson, “Newt is so undisciplined he can’t even enforce a truce of his own creation.”

Update: “Campaigns aren’t about alliances, campaigns are about ideas.”