Obama campaign shifts, targets barbs at Gingrich too

Just a few days ago Newt Gingrich promised to run a “relentlessly positive” campaign. It’s a message he reiterated in a letter sent to members of his staff — and released to members of the press — this morning:
“I am instructing all members of my campaign staff and respectfully urge anyone acting as a surrogate for our campaign to avoid initiating attacks on other Republican candidates.” Gingrich wrote. ”It is my hope that my Republican opponents will join me in this commitment.”
Mitt Romney, meanwhile, offered a pledge not make “offensive” or “incendiary” statements about his Republican rivals or President Obama.
But those promises seemed to fall apart rapidly yesterday as both of the leading candidates for the Republican nomination took increasingly damaging shots at each other. It’s shaping up to be a knock-down, drag-out fight for the GOP nomination that is leaving Democrats downright gleeful.
Romney and Gingrich and their allies traded barbs all day on Monday.
“If he was working as a spokesman for Fannie Mae – excuse me, Freddie Mac — if he was there because of his political connections — and then if Freddie Mac fails, I think a fair question is asked, why did he profit as Freddie Mac failed?” Romney said yesterday of his opponent.
He called on Gingrich to return the more than $1.6 million he earned from Freddie Mac.


Gingrich would get more scrutiny if his lead persists, said Axelrod, who poked the former lawmaker for having high expenditures at the jewelry store Tiffany's and for portraying a "gauzy" relationship with Bill Clinton even though he presided over the former Democratic president's impeachment.


"Just remember the higher a monkey climbs on the pole, the more you can see his butt," Axelrod said folksily about Gingrich, quoting some "homespun wisdom" he said he heard from a Chicago politician years ago.


"The Speaker's very high on the pole right now, and we'll see how people like the view."


The Obama campaign's attacks lend further legitimacy to Gingrich, who is ahead of Romney in Iowa and South Carolina, and is gaining ground in New Hampshire, where Romney has led for months.


Those three early voting states will help determine the outcome of the nominating contest, which Obama advisers said could still be a close race five or six months from now.


"You could see this thing going way deep, unless someone runs out of momentum or money," said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina. Axelrod said both men could "mortgage" a general election campaign by appealing too much to their base now.


Aside from a dual-attack approach, Obama advisers laid out other bits of strategy guiding their approach to 2012.


President Bill Clinton would campaign for Obama, they said.


Themes from Obama's recent speech in Kansas advocating economic policies that give a fair shake to the middle class would continue to get top billing, regardless of whether Romney or Gingrich end up as the president's opponent.


"The debate is going to be largely the same because the economic theory on ... their side is largely the same," Axelrod said.


Messina outlined five pathways to earning the 270 state electoral votes needed to win re-election.


Those included scenarios in which Obama won one or all of these states: Florida; southern states North Carolina and Virginia; midwestern states Ohio and Iowa; western states Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada as well as Iowa; or the "expansion" state of Arizona.


Messina said the campaign's grassroots organizing dwarfed the Republicans' efforts, even in Iowa, where the Republican candidates have focused a lot of time and resources ahead of the country's first nominating contest there.