We’re deep in the tattletale stage in the Republican presidential campaign, a period that finds the various candidates eager to expose the ideological transgressions of their rivals. To that end, Mitt Romney’s campaign has produced a new web video that uses a 2008 environmental ad to present Newt Gingrich in a scandalous public-policy canoodle with Nancy Pelosi. Sitting with Pelosi on a loveseat, Gingrich utters these shocking words: “[W]e do agree: Our country must take action to address climate change.’’ Romney’s rivals, meanwhile, continue in their quest to tag Mitt with having advocated RomneyCare’s individual mandate as a model for national policy. That crusade has become both as revealing as it is comical. After Newt Gingrich joined Rick Santorum’s protracted attack on Romney’s health-care law in a mid-October debate, Romney rounded on the former Speaker. “Actually, Newt, we got the idea of an individual mandate from you,’’ Romney said, noting, accurately, that Gingrich himself had once supported requiring individuals to buy health insurance. How, a wide-eyed young conservative might ask, could that possibly be?
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