Romney Goes for Aggressive Attacks on Gingrich

At New York Times, "Shifting Tactics, Romney Attacks Surging Gingrich":

Mitt Romney, his presidential aspirations suddenly endangered by Newt Gingrich’s rapid resurgence, is employing aggressive new arguments in an effort to disqualify Mr. Gingrich as a credible choice to Republicans, calling him “zany” in an interview on Wednesday and questioning his commitment to free enterprise.

But in an acknowledgment that he might not be able to reverse Mr. Gingrich’s momentum quickly, Mr. Romney and his team are bracing for a far rougher slog through the early Republican nominating contests than they had envisioned even a few weeks ago and preparing for months of a state-by-state, delegate-by-delegate fight.

The Romney campaign and its allies are unsure whether the attacks on Mr. Gingrich’s stability, temperament and worldview will take hold before the voting begins. Mr. Romney and some of his aides and advisers suggest that their revised campaign strategy will rely on advantages in organization and financing for the long run while moving quickly in the short term to turn Mr. Gingrich’s own words against him.

Mr. Romney is seeking to paint Mr. Gingrich as “an unreliable conservative” on issues like climate change. And he is seizing on a remark Mr. Gingrich made this week, condemning Mr. Romney for profiting from layoffs and corporate restructuring he oversaw in his years running Bain Capital, that many conservative commentators said sounded like a Democratic antibusiness refrain.

Mr. Romney said voters should take a closer look at Mr. Gingrich’s history of policy ideas.

“Zany is not what we need in a president,” Mr. Romney said. “Zany is great in a campaign. It’s great on talk radio. It’s great in print, it makes for fun reading, but in terms of a president, we need a leader, and a leader needs to be someone who can bring Americans together.”

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Plus, more at Memeorandum.

BONUS: Check out more aggressiveness at National Review, "Winnowing the Field." It's a merciless attack on Gingrich.