President Obama's senior campaign adviser, David Axelrod, took a swipe at Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Monday, referring to the former Speaker of the House as the "godfather of gridlock."
"I was amused by the Newt Gingrich ad, by the way, because he talked about how he's going to bring to country together to solve problems. You're talking about the godfather of gridlock here. The guy who, you know, two decades ago really invented the kind of tactics that have now become commonplace in Washington, so this is a whole new Newt," said Axelrod on MSNBC's "The Daily Rundown."
Gingrich released his first Iowa TV ad Monday, in which he says "working together we can and will rebuild the America we love."
Democrats have primarily focused their criticisms of the GOP field on Mitt Romney, claiming the former Massachusetts governor bases his policy positions on political expediency. But with Gingrich's recent rise in the polls that could be changing.
When asked if this was the Obama campaign's case against Gingrich, Axelrod said, "Well, I think it may be the public's case against him. They don't want to go back to that."
The first national poll taken after rival Herman Cain announced he was suspending his campaign for the GOP nomination shows Gingrich at the top of the GOP field.
According to a Poll Position survey of likely Republican primary voters and caucus-goers released Monday, Gingrich took 37 percent of the support of those surveyed, followed by Romney at 23 percent.
