“In a call last Sunday morning, just hours after Mr. Romney’s double-digit loss to Mr. Gingrich in the South Carolina primary, the Romney team outlined the new approach to the candidate. Put aside the more acute focus on President Obama and narrow in on Mr. Gingrich.
“Find lines of attack that could goad Mr. Gingrich into angry responses and rally mainstream Republicans. Swarm Gingrich campaign events to rattle him. Have Mr. Romney drop his above-the-fray persona and carry the fight directly to his opponent, especially in two critical debates scheduled for the week…
“By this weekend, Mr. Romney’s aides were on the offensive and increasingly confident, with some combination of their strategy and Mr. Gingrich’s own performance swinging polls in Mr. Romney’s direction. Even as it acknowledged the damage inflicted on Mr. Romney by the past several weeks, his team suggested that it had learned a lesson about never letting up on rivals, especially if Mr. Romney wins the nomination and confronts Mr. Obama in the general election…
“If Mr. Romney does win here on Tuesday, it will have been through a blistering and unrelenting series of attacks.”
“[Leading Republican figures] said that if Mr. Gingrich won Florida, they anticipated further efforts to pressure leading Republicans, including former governors like Jeb Bush of Florida and Haley Barbour of Mississippi, as well as officials who passed up presidential runs this year, like Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, to help build a firewall around Mr. Romney.
“They predicted intensifying criticism of Mr. Gingrich’s record and style, both through the Romney campaign and among conservative commentators who think having Mr. Gingrich as the nominee would sink the party’s chances of winning the White House. If Mr. Romney were to lose badly in Florida, they said, it would inevitably bring new speculation about another candidate jumping into the race, even though it is not immediately apparent who that might be.”
“‘We ran a moderate in 1996 and we lost. We ran a moderate in 2008 and we lost,’ Mr. Gingrich on Saturday told a small crowd gathered on the golf course at the PGA Center for Golf Learning and Performance. ‘I think the only way to defeat Barack Obama is to run a solid, conservative, make-the-case [campaign] for our values, our beliefs, our programs.’…
“‘I will go all the way to the convention,’ he said. ‘I expect to win the nomination.’ Asked what his plan was to get there, Mr. Gingrich replied only: ‘State by state.'”
“‘You know, I’m running against Speaker Gingrich, for instance, a very nice fellow,’ he said, eliciting some boos from the audience. ‘He’s a historian, but that doesn’t give him the right to rewrite history.’
“‘He was given the opportunity to lead our party,’ Mr. Romney continued, as an audience member interrupted with, ‘He failed!’
“‘You’re right, he failed,’ Mr. Romney said.
“‘We allowed him to lead our party and some of us remember, ‘Oh yeah, the Contract With America, that was a good thing. We took over the House, that was great news,” he continued. ‘What happened four years later? Well, he was fined for ethics violations, he ultimately had to resign in disgrace. He can’t rewrite history. We have to go back and look at history and say he may be a great guy with a lot of great ideas, but he is not the leader we need in a critical time.'”
“Chaffetz, a Mitt Romney supporter, has been turning up at Gingrich events during the past two days, though he denied in a brief interview with The Hill that he was doing so in order to goad the former Speaker. He said he was merely there to ‘offer some perspective.’
“But Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond decided it was time to do some goading of his own, as he briefed reporters. Hammond first waved with faux-glee at the Utah congressman and invited him to join the briefing. When Chaffetz ignored him, the spokesman instead marched the press over to where Chaffetz was standing with fellow Romney supporter Bay Buchanan…
“Hammond would not let the matter rest, though, teasing an increasingly uncomfortable Chaffetz that ‘I didn’t even have to pay at a fundraiser to see you — that’s exciting.’
“Hammond continued for several minutes in a similar vein, asking Chaffetz with fake bonhomie, ‘Where are you going next? Do you want our schedule for tomorrow? Are you going to join our charter to Tampa?'”
“With polls showing him falling behind rival Mitt Romney in Florida, Newt Gingrich acknowledged on Saturday that he is hoping to siphon votes from another candidate, Rick Santorum.
“‘I have great respect for my good friend Rick Santorum. He’s a terrific person, we’ve known each other for the past 20 years, but the fact is, he’s not going to win in Florida,’ Gingrich told a crowd at the Aloma Baptist Church in Winter Park, Fla. on Saturday evening.
“‘Please just try to convince your friends the only effective practical conservative vote on Tuesday is for Newt Gingrich,’ he said, ‘that’s just a fact.'”
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