Mitt Romney is getting desperate ... and losing control (Jim Young/Reuters)
As you may have seen, yesterday Nancy Pelosi
said that "there's something" that she knows about Newt Gingrich that will ensure he never becomes president. It was an obvious setup to help Newt Gingrich (if you're Newt, who better to have as a foil than Nancy Pelosi?) but Mitt Romney in his infinite boneheadedness fell into the trap
anyway earlier on Fox:
CARLSON: Mr. Romney, what does Nancy Pelosi know if it would be such a bombshell as to why Newt Gingrich couldn't be president?
ROMNEY: I wish I knew what that was [laughter]. I'd tell people what it is right now.
But that's one of the reasons why I'm saying that all of the records that were part of the ethics investigation, all of the transcripts, all of the records have to be made public.
Not just the final white-washed report but the full record, the reason that 88% of the Republicans in the House voted to reprimand their own Speaker..... we need to understand why that is, and those records need to be released, because you know that if Nancy Pelosi knows those things right now, she will hand them to Barack Obama's campaign if Speaker Gingrich were our nominee.
To give you an idea how stupid and desperate this is of Mitt Romney, imagine if during the 2008 campaign, either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton had taken something Newt Gingrich said about the other, and used it as an attack. Unthinkably dumb, right? Well so was this.
Moreover, Romney seems to think that Pelosi was suggesting she knew something about the ethics investigation and Newt Gingrich. But in the very same interview, she also said that everything that is important about the investigation has already been released. "I think the public record speaks for itself," she said. "I don't know if there's any reason to go further than that. But read the public record."
Maybe Nancy Pelosi really does know something, but the way she phrased her comments —plus the fact that she made them to the GOP's new boogieman, John King—strongly suggests to me that she was setting up a trap for Mitt Romney—and he walked right into it. And unless something better comes along, Newt Gingrich will take advantage of it during tomorrow night's debate.
7:33 AM PT: And Newt Gingrich (predictably) isn't flinching, challenging Pelosi to say what it is that she knows. "I have no idea what's in Nancy Pelosi's head. If she knows something, I have a simple challenge: Spit it out."