(Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

By Joyce Jones

Newt Gingrich shared some interesting thoughts this week about whether birther claims are racist and it’s his assertion that they are not, Politico reports.

“I think that Obama creates very powerful emotions about him, largely because of the radicalization of his views. And I think that that’s a key fact,” he told reporters before the Mitt Romney fundraiser Donald Trump hosted in Las Vegas.

Now the reason Gingrich knows that attempts to paint a picture of the president as not simply un-American but African — red meat to the kind of people who still don’t cotton to the idea of a Black family in the White House — aren’t racist is that no one accuses Reps. Allen West or Tim Scott, who are African-American, of not being U.S. citizens.

“So the idea of asserting that any charge against Obama somehow manages magically in the media to get back to racism, I think is just one ore device to protect Obama,” Gingrich said.

Sounds to me like the former House speaker is comparing Hawaiian pineapples to Florida oranges. First of all, Tea Party darlings West and Scott are drinking out of the same Kool-Aid vat when it comes to most issues related to Obama, so of course they’re not being called un-American. And one never knows what certain people may be whispering behind their backs. But I wouldn’t get too comfortable if I were them.

Just the other day, West expressed support for keeping some of the popular provisions in the Affordable Care Act, such as barring providers from rejecting people who have pre-existing conditions and keeping kids on their parents insurance plans until they’re 26. The original Tea Party group Freedom Works, Club for Growth and other conservative advocates want the entire law repealed.

You’d better watch your back, Allen West.

(Photos: Sara D. Davis/Getty Images; Justin K. Aller/Getty Images)

By Joyce Jones

Now that Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have awakened from their dream of becoming president, each will be expected to exhibit signs of amnesia about how Mitt Romney basically money-bombed them off the campaign trail with negative advertising. But Team Obama has no plans to forget and can be expected to beat that drum from now until November.

“[Romney’s] basically reduced to running a negative campaign,” said senior advisor David Axelrod during a Monday conference call with reporters. “We have a different approach.”

It’s called “Go,” a $25 million ad buy that will air in nine battleground states. It’s filled with positive messages about President Obama’s record, Axelrod explained, but make no mistake, when the hits from the Romney campaign come their way, they’re willing and, more important, ready to hit back.

“We’re also going to be prepared — and I want to be clear — to respond to the attacks that we expect to continue not just from the Romney campaign but the [Karl] Rove and Koch brothers contract killers over there in super PAC land who are going to continue to pound away on behalf of Gov. Romney,” he said.

During the call there was a bit of a technological hiccup, rendering several reporters unable to ask questions. Axelrod joked that the glitch must have come out of the GOP’s bag of dirty tricks.

“These Republicans will stop at nothing,” he said. “They’ve snipped our lines.”