Newt’s one smart cookie

Gingrich is a smart man. All the candidates are smart but I don’t think there is much of a comparison between Romney and Gingrich on who is, at least, more experienced. Newt said today that he is trying to release the Contract between his former company, the Center for Health Transformation, and Freddie Mac. It’s widely known that Romney has tried to hit Newt on his connections with Freddie Mac for a while, only to stumble and then call anyone who questions his former company as Anti-Capitalist. Romney, after taking a beating in South Carolina, has finally made up his mind on releasing his taxes. How long did Romney know that his tax returns would be an issue? If he didn’t think they would, he is a blathering idiot. He was supposed to be running against Obama, the class warrior….duh his tax returns would be an issue. I’m sure Obama would have gotten Warren Buffet to attack Romney over it.

Point being, Romney if he is as smart as they say he is (you know to “fix” the economy and all) should have known and should have been prepared for the attacks. If he wasn’t going to release them, he should have had a better excuse than, “I may think about maybe releasing my taxes in April, if I think at that time that I might think that would be a good idea, but I won’t know until then if I’ll release them or not, but you never know” answer. If he knew he was going to have to release them, then just do it.

Gingrich on the other hand, knew Romney would be going after Freddie Mac and decided to head off Romney by releasing, or at least trying to (there are legal obstacles in the way such as disclosure agreements) release the contracts between his company and Freddie. Newt has said that they will show he wasn’t a lobbyist.

Newt Gingrich said on Monday that he has requested the release of his consulting contract with Freddie Mac, adding that it would be “very helpful” if the release came before next week’s Florida primary contest.

Asked if he will release the consulting contract between his former company, the Center for Health Transformation, and Freddie Mac, Gingrich told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos: “We asked them to work out releasing it. They have a number of confidentiality agreements. I’m very comfortable with it being released.”

Gingrich denied Romney’s accusations, saying that Romney has been “deliberately saying things he knows are false.”

“I did no lobbying, period,” Gingrich said of his time advising Freddie Mac.

Newt hopes to cut off Romney’s line of attack early and most likely try to use it to his own advantage. Instead Newt can turn the table and ask Romney about his Gubernatorial records, which just so happen to have been wiped clean after his term.

When Romney left the governorship of Massachusetts, 11 of his aides bought the hard drives of their state-issued computers to keep for themselves. Also before he left office, the governor’s staff had emails and other electronic communications by Romney’s administration wiped from state servers, state officials say.

Those actions erased much of the internal documentation of Romney’s four-year tenure as governor, which ended in January 2007. Precisely what information was erased is unclear.

Republican and Democratic opponents of Romney say the scrubbing of emails – and a claim by Romney that paper records of his governorship are not subject to public disclosure – hinder efforts to assess his performance as a politician and elected official.

h/t Legal Insurrection

As Professor Jacobson noted in his post:

People who destroy hard drives shouldn’t demand records from others.

Let’s just see if Newt will use this against Romney in the next Debates. If so, KO and the Romney beast might finally have been slain.