Mitt vs. Newt Fratricide will leave both unelectable

This morning I was not very impressed with Mitt’s attack on Newt, but this afternoon’s stuff is much better than I even hoped.

Mitt’s team is going after Newt’s “erratic behavior” and stating flat out that Newt is “unfit to lead” and has a history of “irrational behavior that you do not want in the commander-in-chief.” It is tough stuff that will require Newt to climb down into the gutter.

Talent, who was a congressman under Newt’s leadership in the 1990s, named Newt’s erratic behavior as the primary reason Republicans ousted Newt from the speaker’s office after four years. “We also reached the conclusion after four years that we also could not go on with him as our leader,” Talent explained. “You were in a situation where you would get up in the morning, and you would have the to check the newspaper, the clippings, that was before the internet, to see what the speaker had said that day that you were going to have to clean up after in your own district and I again, I don’t like saying this, but it’s exactly why we did what we did.”

Sununu piled on after a question from Time’s Mark Halperin, asking whether they would be comfortable with Newt as commander-in-chief:

Let me answer that this way: having sat in the White House with a president that was completely reliable, understood completely the depths of which is required to make the kinds of hard decisions the President has to make, I strongly reinforce my endorsement of Mitt Romney as the right man there. The off-the-cuff for example that Gingrich throws out on occasion is a reflection of the off-the-cuff thinking that he goes through to deal with issues and that is not what you want in the commander-in-chief.

Sununu, who worked in President George H. W. Bush’s administration, then added that Newt displayed the “irrational behavior that you do not want in the commander-in-chief.”

The RWNJ who vote in the primaries want a “fighter” so in spite of Newt’s initial response that he will take the high road, I wouldn’t put money on that outcome. And even on the off chance that Newt can stick with his “high road” approach, the idea “irrational” unstable meme that will build up around Newt of the next few months feds directly into what voters already know about Newt – that he is an unsteady guy who left two wives and goes around saying crazy shit.

This ‘Newt can’t be trusted’ narrative ties in nicely to a second line of attack coming out of the Romney campaign: Newt’s opposition to Paul Ryan’s budget, specifically its central provision of turning Medicare into a private voucher system. Not only are they criticizing Newt for not jumping on the Paul Ryan bandwagon, but they are specifically calling out his comment that the plan was “right-wing social engineering” as evidence that his erratic behavior is dangerous to the conservative movement.

Who is the Libertarian Party’s candidate? Whoever it is might find themselves in second place after the dust settles on this GOP apocalypse.