The latest polls in Florida point to a significant Romney victory on Tuesday, possibly double digits.
If Romney does win by a double digit margin in Florida, the pressure will be for those who do not support Romney to stop criticizing Romney in the name of defeating Obama. A Romney defeat in a general election will be blamed on the language used against Romney in the primaries.
But that standard was not applied by Romney supporters when, in turn, Perry, Cain and Gingrich were leading.
Republicans are “giving Dems an advantage in the coming war to define Romney’s Bain years, which will be as central to the general election narrative as the war over John Kerry’s Vietnam service was in 2004.”
This point, which is quoted from a Washington Post piece that ran a few weeks ago, was used day after day by the conservative media and GOP establishment in response to attacks that came from Gingrich when attempting to vet Romney’s record at Bain.
Flash forward to the days following Gingrich’s South Carolina victory, and it was open season where no subject of attack was considered out of bounds.
How many campaign ads from the DNC would be run using clips of Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, or Charles Krauthammer hammering Gingrich? The gauntlet was laid down by many in the conservative media. Below is just a very a small sampling of what was said.
Ann Coulter, in one of her less bombastic moments, called Gingrich ‘pompous and boring’. Drudge ran a false banner claiming “Newt Repeatedly Insulted Reagan”. Emmett Tyrell, III, called Gingrich “Our Bill Clinton.” Earlier, National Review ran a cover entitled, “Newt’s World.” Jennifer Rubin declared: “With Gingrich, you never have the peace of mind that you’ve gotten to the bottom of his well of sleaze.” And so on and so on.
Much of the conservative punditry didn’t seem to care if their attacks on Gingrich would hurt him in the general election, yet they will blame others for doing far less in response. All the Stalin-esque re-writing of history can’t change that.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY
