After tonght’s debate, Mitt Romney’s campaign clearly saw an opening to go after a surging Newt Gingrich, after he argued for considering a path to legality for immigrants who had originally come to this country illegally 25 years ago, but had spent decades integrating themselves in a community.

“Newt Gingrich supported the 1986 amnesty act, and even though he conceded that was a mistake, he said that he was willing to repeat that mistake by extending amnesty to immigrants who are illegally in the country today,” Romney adviser and spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said in the spin room following the AEI/Heritage Foundation debate in Washington, DC. “Mitt Romney is against amnesty, and Newt Gingrich made it very clear he was for amnesty.”