Newt’s nastiness comes back to haunt him

By Dana Milbank,
WashPost
Published: December 9

The campaign of Mitt Romney, the Rip Van Winkle of presidential politics, finally awakened this week with a savage counterattack against Newt Gingrich, the man who against all odds is threatening to wrest the Republican nomination from Romney.

In a conference call Thursday sponsored by Romney’s campaign, two surrogates of the former Massachusetts governor let fly with a barrage against Gingrich that was shockingly harsh even by today’s caustic standards.

“For Newt Gingrich, in an effort of self-aggrandizement, to come out and throw a clever phrase that has no other purpose than to make him sound a little smarter than the conservative Republican leadership,” said former White House chief of staff John Sununu, “is the most self-serving, anti-conservative thing one can imagine happening . . . just the latest in a pattern of anti-principled actions that really irritated his own leadership and produced 88 percent of the Republicans in Congress voting for his reprimand.”

“He’s not a reliable or trustworthy leader,” former Missouri senator Jim Talent said of Gingrich’s labeling the House Republican budget a “radical” proposition. He “says and does those kinds of things because he’s not reliable as a leader.”

(More here.)

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