He supported cap and trade, the individual mandate and TARP. He attacked Paul Ryan. He wants to build a colony on the moon … The attacks on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich during Saturday’s Republican presidential debate were many and varied, but in the end, if you were an Iowa conservative leery of Romney because he supported a mandate, would you switch to Romney because Newt supported it, too?

Newt has a fairly reasonable response to all of these allegations, but one: that he lobbied Congress. He still is in denial about. Here is what he said Saturday: