Republican presidential candidates, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney shake hands at the end of a debate sponsored by CNN, the Republican Party of Florida and the Hispanic Leadership Network at the University North Florida on January 26, 2012 in Jacksonville, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

(theGRIO) Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich refers to President Obama as “the food stamp president,” and a “Saul Alinsky radical” and says the president takes advice from people who “don’t like the classical America.” He constantly promises to take on Obama in Lincoln-Douglas style debates if he wins the nomination and jokes he will let the president use a teleprompter, a regular GOP attack line that implies Obama can’t give a speech without help.

On the other hand, his chief opponent, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, barely can stomach calling Obama a socialist as other Republicans do and rarely invokes the sharp, anti-Obama rhetoric of the Tea Party.

Is Romney too meek in his Obama-bashing to win the GOP primary? Since Obama’s election, many Republicans have not just taken on his policies, but criticized the president in a way that many Democrats feel borders on showing disrespect to him. The finger-pointing at Obama by Arizona Republican Gov. Jan Brewer Wednesday was the latest in what some Democrats view as over-the-top rhetoric and behavior by Republicans.

Is that attitude what it takes to win over conservative voters? In polls, it’s impossible to determine exactly what causes the resistance to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who lost the conservative and Tea Party vote in Iowa and South Carolina, blunting his progress toward theGOP nomination. A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed Gingrich leads Romney by 30 points among “very conservative” voters and 25 among Tea Party supporters.

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