In 2008 we already knew about Gingrich’s personal life. We knew about his past support for the individual mandate. We knew he worked for Fannie and Freddie. We knew about all of that. All of the things haunting him today were already public.

That didn’t stop Michele Bachmann from heaping praises on him, going as far as calling him “our renaissance man”. She declared that Gingrich “can do it all”. Today she’s attacking him for everything that was already public knowledge back in 2008.

Curiously, last night we endured yet another debate in which Bachmann ended up throwing roundhouses at Mitt Romney’s main competition so that he didn’t have to. Pawlenty, Perry, Cain, and now Gingrich have all taken heavy shots from her in front of the cameras, yet Mitt himself rarely draws anything harsher than the usual boilerplate about mandates which everyone already knows. And even when she lobs that at him, she’s careful to include Gingrich in the criticism, which has the effect of mitigating it as a major liability for Romney.

Why is she doing this? Why go after Gingrich and help Romney? I subscribe to Ace’s theory: She knows she won’t be president so her new goal is to be Mitt’s vice presidential nominee. She’s helping him ward off challengers and demonstrating her ability to act as his attack dog. If when she hits Mitt, it ends up helping him:

In the previous debate (the one before last night’s), she did make a rare attack on Romney, calling Romney and Gingrich “Newt Romney,” and blasting them both for supporting individual mandates.

It occurred to me that that was a sort of attack that actually helps Mitt Romney though– For if Mitt Romney can establish the predicate that he and Newt both have the same sins of flip-flopping and moderateness, then the it comes down to a question of electability, which many would argue benefits Mitt Romney.

In short, even when she “attacks” Mitt, all she’s actually doing is noting that Newt has the same problem as he does. The only “attacks” she launches on Mitt are worn-out, factored-in bits of history. They serve only to make his challengers seem like less of an attractive alternative.