The campaign of Mitt Romney, the Rip van Winkle of presidential politics, finally awakened last week with a savage counterattack against Newt Gingrich, the man who against all odds is threatening to wrest the Republican nomination from Romney.

In a conference call Thursday sponsored by Romney’s campaign, two surrogates of the former Massachusetts governor let fly with a barrage against Gingrich that was shockingly harsh even by today’s caustic standards.

“For Newt Gingrich, in an effort of self-aggrandizement, to come out and throw a clever phrase that has no other purpose than to make him sound a little smarter than the conservative Republican leadership,” said former White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu, “is the most self-serving, anti-conservative thing one can imagine happening … just the latest in a pattern of anti-principled actions that really irritated his own leadership and produced 88 percent of the Republicans in Congress voting for his reprimand.”

“He’s not a reliable or trustworthy leader,” said former Sen. Jim Talent of Gingrich’s labeling the House Republican budget as a “radical” proposition. “He says and does those kinds of things because he’s not reliable as a leader.”

Self-serving. Self-aggrandizing. Anti-conservative. Anti-principled. Hints of corruption, hypocrisy, bizarre and destructive behavior.

These were brutal descriptions, and yet there was something poetic about the belated Romney assault on Gingrich. The attack words were terms popularized by Gingrich himself in his rise to power in the House nearly two decades ago.

Fifteen years ago, Gingrich’s political action committee, with the help of GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz, issued a now-famous memo telling Republican candidates which words they should use to describe their opponents. Among them: “anti,” “betray,” “bizarre,” “corrupt,” “destructive,” “disgrace,” “lie,” “pathetic,” “radical,” “self-serving,” “selfish,” “shallow,” “shame,” “sick,” “traitors.”

“Remember that creating a difference helps you,” this Gingrich-sponsored memo said. “These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.”

With that memo, and with the slashing style of politics that brought Republicans to power in the House for the first time in generations, Gingrich did more than anybody else to set the tone in Washington. Now, in a form of rough justice, the savagery has come full circle and is being used against him.

Romney and his surrogates — many of whom served under Gingrich in the House — are portraying Gingrich as erratic, unreliable, hypocritical and betraying friends and principles. They are contrasting that with Romney, a “leader” and champion of “reform” — terms that Gingrich’s memo, based on focus-group research, coached Republicans to use to define themselves.

Gingrich has followed his own philosophy over the years, making an art of name-calling. He said the Democrats created a “sick society” and were the “enemy of normal Americans.” Democratic congressional leaders were “sick” and had a “Mussolini-like ego” that led them “to run over normal human beings and to destroy honest institutions.”

He called the Clintons “counterculture McGovernicks.” More recently, he accused President Obama of having a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview and called him “the most serious, radical threat to traditional America ever to occupy the White House.” Gingrich said schools should use children as laborers instead of “unionized” janitors — all phrases rich in the “contrasts” Gingrich’s team advocated in 1996.

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones recently dug up a 1978 Gingrich quotation lamenting that “one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty.”

Thanks to Gingrich, this is no longer a problem, in either party. In elections, Newtonian Nastiness works — and now, inevitably, it is being used against its author.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who served in the House with Gingrich, said the former speaker is one of those “leaders that have one standard for the people that they are leading and a different standard for themselves.”

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., called Gingrich “too erratic,” “too self-centered” and lacking “the capacity to control himself.” Former Rep. Guy Molinari, R-N.Y., called Ging-rich “evil” and the prospect of his becoming president “appalling.”

Then came the Romney-hosted teleconference.

Gingrich “says outrageous things that come from nowhere and he has a tendency to say them at exactly the time when they most undermine the conservative agenda,” Talent reported.

Gingrich “is more concerned about Newt Gingrich than he is about conservative principle,” Sununu contributed. The “off-the-cuff thinking … is not what you want in the commander in chief.”

What goes around comes around. He’s Newt Gingrich, and he approved this message. 

Dana Milbank is a columnist for The Washington Post. He can be contacted at:

danamilbank@washpost.com