In his exchange last night with Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum hit all the buttons that need to be pushed: he went after Gingrich’s penchant for “grandiose” schemes, his lack of organization and focus, his tendency to “pop” and create distracting headlines, the fact that there was a conservative coup against the former House speaker.

But I do wonder if he overreached when he brought up the House banking scandal. Santorum accused Gingrich of not doing more about congressional check-kiting because he didn’t want to rock the boat with both parties’ leaders. This set up Gingrich’s rebuttal. Gingrich’s history of being a thorn in the side of leadership, from taking on former House Speaker Jim Wright to fighting George Bush on the 1990 tax increase, is just too well known for that line of attack to be effective. Santorum would have more profitably gone after Gingrich for undermining Republicans to his right, i.e., slowing down the Class of ’94, once he became speaker.