WITHOUT DEBATE MODERATORS TO BAIT, GINGRICH PERFORMS HIS ONE OTHER TRICK

I think I've called Newt Gingrich a one-trick pony in the past, but he's really a two-trick pony. It's been a while since he's had the opportunity to perform his most crowd-pleasing trick -- attacking debate moderators -- so it's time for him to start accusing Obama of anti-white racism and being a crypto-Muslim.

So we get this:

While campaigning ahead of Saturday's primary in Louisiana, Gingrich spoke with the American Family Association's Sandy Rios about the recent Washington Post story on Rick Santorum's association with Opus Dei, a devout Catholic group....

Gingrich said the media, which he believes is "in the tank for Obama," will "do anything that helps re-elect" the president.

"It is just astonishing to me how pro-Obama Gingrich told Rios. "Do you think you are going to see two pages on Obama's Muslim friends? Or two pages on the degree to which Obama is consistently apologizing to Islam while attacking the Catholic church?"

"Do you see anybody in the elite media prepared to say, gee, isn't this kind of odd that we really worry a lot about the Quran and nothing about the Bible?" Gingrich asked, likely in reference to Obama's recent apology to Afghanistan after U.S. troops burned the Islamic religious text.

Remind me again, Newt: In what war zone are U.S. troops in danger of being killed because they're offending the beliefs of local residents by burning Bibles?

And then there's this:

Newt Gingrich called Obama's remarks about Trayvon Martin "disgraceful" in an interview with Sean Hannity, according to CBS/National Journal.

"It's not a question of who that young man looked like. Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe, period. We should all be horrified no matter what the ethnic background," Gingrich said. "Is the President suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot that would be ok because it didn't look like him?"

Well, no, he's not saying that. Only who are trying to sow personal, visceral hatred of the president would interpret what he said that way. But this is interesting in light of yet another Gingrich pronouncement:

Newt Gingrich insisted Friday that he has no questions about President Barack Obama's Christian faith, but said he understands why some Americans might.

Asked about polls suggesting many in the public continue to think Obama is a Muslim, Gingrich said in Louisiana that he takes Obama "at his word" that he believes in Christianity.

Then he launched into a riff on how Obama's policies are excessively sensitive to non-Christian, non-Jewish faiths, suggesting it could raise doubts for some about where the president's impulses come from.

"Why does the president behave the way that people would think that [he's Muslim]?" Gingrich said. "You have to ask, why would they believe that? It's not cause they're stupid. It's because they watch the kind of things I just described to you."

So he's basically saying that it's OK to think Obama is a Muslim because, in Gingrich's view, Obama seems like a Muslim. It's sort of like George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin -- Zimmerman thought Martin seemed like a criminal, and then he shot him. Perfectly understandable, right? Just like thinking Obama is a Muslim who hates Christianity.

(Via Memeorandum.)