In a Bloomberg forum yesterday afternoon, NR was present to hear David Axelrod, a top Obama adviser, answer questions about the upcoming campaign. Newt Gingrich’s strong poll numbers made him a common topic of conversation.

One reporter noted that Axelrod was quite fluent in the “keywords” necessary to attack Romney, and asked whether this meant the Obama administration still viewed a Gingrich nomination as a “distant possibility,” and hadn’t yet begun to get a handle on Newt as an opponent. Axelrod joked, “I’m not even sure Gingrich has the Gingrich campaign down. I don’t know why we should be out in front of him on that.” In fact, he claimed that Newt’s campaign was probably, at its core, no different than the others — “it may be delivered in a more flamboyant fashion, it may come embroidered with some puffery, but it’s still essentially the same debate.”

The light-hearted jabs at Gingrich continued, when one reporter asked about his “self-styled futuris[m]” and enthusiasm for nanotechnology — Axelrod joking dismissed it, nothing that he didn’t know too many voters who considered nanotechnology a major campaign issue. Axelrod also quipped that “for the longest time, Newt Gingrich was not really a factor in this race … he was left at the checkout counter at Tiffany’s.”

Amid the jibes, Axelrod did in fact begin to build a case again Gingrich, by repeating one accusation, that Newt is “the godfather of gridlock,” and, “more than anyone, fomented this atmosphere in Washington where people are no longer respectful opponents.” Later, he reiterated Newt’s role in our contemporary discourse: “One of the things that I think vexes people is the quality of our politics. He has to bear responsibility for a lot of that.”