Just days after praising his rival GOP presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich took aim at Rick Santorum’s congressional record and said he would be considered the “junior partner” in a match-up between the two Republican hopefuls.
“If you think of us as partners, he would clearly in historical experience have been the junior partner,” Gingrich said Thursday on the campaign trail. “He’s not a bad person, I want to be clear about this, but I don’t know that he has any track record of being able to organize a large-scale campaign.”
He also accused Santorum of not having the organizational experience to govern on a large scale.
“I don’t think you want to hire somebody to get through the election, you want to hire somebody to actually change Washington,” he said.
Earlier this week, Gingrich appeared to draw an alliance between himself and the former Pennsylvania senator to combat front-runner Mitt Romney following the Iowa caucuses.
“We’re going to be out here trying to say how we’re the best candidates, and in the process I think we’re both going to be defining Romney out of
the mainstream of the Republican Party,” Gingrich said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown” in New Hampshire.
Santorum had a surprise second-place finish in the caucuses, losing to Romney by just eight votes. After rivals leveled a bruising negative ad campaign against Gingrich, he came in fourth with 13 percent of the vote in Iowa.
“Rick Santorum had a great night last night,” Gingrich said on MSNBC. “I think he earned that
night. He worked his heart out crisscrossing the state of Iowa. He is a
terrific person.”
Santorum’s standing in Iowa has given him a boost heading into the New Hampshire primary. He moved into third place in a Washington Times-JZ Analytics poll of likely primary voters taken Wednesday.
But Romney was still on top with a double-digit lead over the rest of the GOP field in the Granite State.
The New Hampshire primary takes place Tuesday, Jan. 10.
