Newt Gingrich tells Politico about his former staffers:

He scoffed at his former staffers who had put down his wife. “They were worried about Callista’s impact in South Carolina. I mean, to a degree that was absurd.” We asked what he meant. “Well, just being the younger wife that would turn people off, et cetera, et cetera, that people would do dirty tricks. And every time she goes out she is wildly received. Our volunteers are begging her to go out and do more meetings and have more coffees and see more people. And what I concluded was that we were surrounded by a bunch of guys who had learned politics twenty-five years ago and they had no idea how much the world had changed. . . . By the way, all of them except [Rick] Tyler went to Perry, and I’ll let you decide how successful they’ve been.”

Zing.

If you had told me in the spring that at the end of November, Newt Gingrich would be the frontrunner and Rick Perry would be an afterthought, I would have said you were being deliberately outrageous in a sad cry for attention.

While Gingrich no doubt has earned a moment to gloat or two . . . does anyone else see this as, say, an exuberant, taunting touchdown dance with the score tied at halftime? Once you start throwing in the boasts that they’re already George Foreman, and “down goes Willard”?