He didn't disengage.
I will not chase Romney's misinformation. He just said about four things that were false and you can check on my website. This is the worst kind of trivial politics. We have an ad where Huckabee and McCain talk about how Romney can't tell the truth. ...Wait a second, he just went on and on and on. He is a terrible historian. The vote on the ethics committee was in January 1997 and I asked the Republicans to vote YES to get it behind us. We took control of the House in 40 years and the Democrats were bitter. The only thing we did wrong was that I didn't pay one fine but then I paid it and I wanted it behind us. We had four balanced budgets after that vote. You ought to do is stop and look at those facts. We won the House for the third time in 1998 but the margin was not big enough. In 2006 when you chaired the Governor's association we lost governorship so as a party builder I have the record and you don't.
I didn’t mean he disengaged on every answer, but there was one where he said he didn’t want to attack Romney and another where he said to go look for answers on his web site. Those were the answers I was most worried about. He should have mentioned Romney’s tenure as governor which ranked 47th in job creation and he was too unpopular to run again, the fact that many companies went bankrupt under Romney at Bain, or that he lost the Senate to Kennedy by 17 points.
Romney has this whole package of negative soundbites on Newt he’s repeating over and over until they’re drummed in people’s heads and that’s the kind of stuff Newt has to fire back with. The “governor’s association” attack was weak since most of us don’t know what a “governor’s association” is. Plus the stuff I mentioned above just makes Romney sound worse.
Had there been applause, that exchange would have rocked.
HOW BETTER CAN THE GUY ANSWER THE ATTACK THAN TO SHOW HOW PETTY AND SHRILL ROMNEY WAS. THE GUY WOULDN’T STFU...LISTENED. EVERYONE IN THE ROOM THOUGHT ROMNEY LOOKED DESPARATE AND SLIMY.
FINALLY NEWT SAYS ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. THEN LATER IGNORES THE GUY ALL TOGETHER NOT WANTING TO WASTE ANYMORE TIME ON THE GUY.
If Santorum drops out now, the game is over. Why doesn’t he?