US News

I’d go toe-to-toe vs. O: Newt

WASHINGTON — A beaming Newt Gingrich yesterday boasted that his South Carolina primary win proves he’s the best Republican to go “toe to toe” with President Obama — as a humbled Mitt Romney finally agreed to release his tax returns.

“If you want to beat Barack Obama, then Newt Gingrich is the only person who has the background, the experience and the ability to get on the stage and drive home a conservative message with authenticity,” Gingrich said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“I’m prepared to stand toe-to-toe with Barack Obama and debate him, I think, successfully this fall,” he promised.

The former House speaker hammered that message during a victory lap around the political talk-show circuit, forging the “electability” argument he will make in the crucial Florida primary in eight days.

Gingrich emerged yesterday charged up from his electrifying win in South Carolina, where a skilled debate performance helped him overcome the embarrassment of his ex-wife going on TV to accuse him of wanting an “open marriage.”

Romney, meanwhile, tried to recover from a week spent clumsily ducking questions about his tax returns and his money in Cayman Island tax havens.

The multimillionaire businessman and former Massachusetts governor promised to make public tomorrow his 2010 return and an estimate of his 2011 taxes.

“We just made a mistake in holding off as long as we did,” Romney — who is worth about $260 million — told “Fox News Sunday.”

“We want to get back to the real issues of the campaign: leadership, character, a vision for America, how to get jobs again in America and how to rein in the excessive scale of the federal government,” he said.