hat’s exactly what he did about 30 minutes in – and the result was devastating. It was at the start of the second segment that moderator Wolf Blitzer brought up a comment Gingrich made at a forum in Miami earlier this week, where he belittled Romney for living in “a world of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and making $20 million for no work.” In his most effective debate moments, Gingrich has lashed out at moderators and rallied the partisan audience to his side. He called the same play here, deriding Blitzer’s question as “nonsense.”
“How about if the four of us agree for the rest of the evening we’ll actually talk about issues that relate to governing America?” he asked.
Blitzer observed that Gingrich himself had made the comments about Romney – he was just asking about them.
“I did,” Gingrich replied. “And I’m perfectly happy to say that in an interview on some TV show. But this is a national debate where you have a chance to get the four of us to talk about a whole range of issues.”
It was here that Romney spotted an easy and effective opening. After Blitzer told Gingrich that “if you make a serious accusation against Governor Romney like that, you need to explain it,” Romney himself spoke up.
“Wouldn’t it be nice,” he asked, “if people didn’t make accusations somewhere else that they weren’t willing to defend here?”
At that, the crowd went wild. It was the first time that the cheers at the end of a Gingrich confrontation with a moderator had come for a candidate besides Gingrich. Then, almost as if to taunt him, Blitzer told Gingrich that he was ready to move on to the sort of substantive topics that Gingrich was so eager to address if he was. But Gingrich couldn’t let Romney’s line go, and tried to offer a comeback. But it didn’t really matter. The moment was over and Gingrich had lost it – badly.
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