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Romney likens new Gingrich campaign to ‘I Love Lucy’

WHAT A MESS! Newt failed to get on the Virginia ballot, sparking a Romney comparison to Lucille Ball. (
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DES MOINES, Iowa — Newt, you got some splainin’ to do!

One week before next Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses, Republican Mitt Romney ridiculed rival Newt Gingrich’s campaign organization as a slapdash effort reminiscent of a famous “I Love Lucy” episode.

Romney got his dig in over the Gingrich campaign’s failure to get its candidate on the Virginia primary ballot after the state ruled Newt hadn’t come up with the required 10,000 valid signatures.

“I think he compared that to Pearl Harbor,” Romney said while stumping at a New Hampshire chowder house yesterday morning before heading to Iowa.

“I think it’s more like Lucille Ball at the chocolate factory. So I mean, you know, you’ve got to get it organized.”

The line was a reference to a famous episode when Ball takes a job wrapping chocolates and desperately tries to keep up with an assembly line, feverishly stuffing candies in her mouth and blouse as the chocolates pile up.

Michael Krull, Gingrich’s campaign director, cast the blunder in epic terms, writing this weekend on the campaign’s Facebook page: “Newt and I agreed that the analogy is December 1941. We have experienced an unexpected setback, but we will re-group and refocus with increased determination, commitment and positive action.”

Romney rubbed it in by saying, “I’m on the ballot in Virginia, that’s the good news.”

Only Romney and Rep. Ron Paul qualified to run in Virginia, a result that provoked condemnation both of the state’s rigorous standards and of the Gingrich organization’s failure to follow the rules.

Romney, neck-and-neck with Gingrich in the latest national Gallup poll, also hit the former House speaker for praising Romney’s own Massachusetts health-care plan when it got enacted five years ago, then slamming it on the campaign trail.

“He’s changed his view in the election year,” Romney said.

Gingrich praised the Romney plan in 2006 in a “Newt Notes” newsletter put out by his Center for Health Transformation, The Wall Street Journal reported, though his campaign denies that Newt wrote it.

While Romney mocked his rival for failing to get on a state ballot, Gingrich fired back in the conservative Iowa countryside by calling the former governor a “Massachusetts moderate,” and teasing him as “Moderate Mitt.”

A spokesman for Gingrich even likened Romney to a socialist over his consideration of a consumption tax — popular in Europe — to replace parts of the US tax code.

“The fact that he’s willing to look at European socialism shows just how far out of the conservative mainstream he is,” said Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond.

Polls put Romney, Gingrich and Paul running close together in Iowa leading up to the caucuses.