ORLANDO, Fla. – Republican insiders are rising up to cut Newt Gingrich down to size, testament to the GOP establishment’s fear that the mercurial candidate could lead the party to disaster this fall.

The gathering criticisms are bitingly sharp, as if edged by a touch of panic, a remarkable development considering the target once was speaker of the House and will go down in history as leader of the Republicans’ 1994 return to power in Congress. The intended beneficiary is Mitt Romney, a once-moderate Massachusetts governor whom many rank-and-file Republicans view with suspicion.

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In Jacksonville, Fla., Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich talks with the Florida Times-Union editorial board. A former GOP campaign strategist says “the Republican establishment might not be wild about Mitt Romney, but they’re terrified by Newt Gingrich.” The Associated Press

“The Republican establishment might not be wild about Mitt Romney, but they’re terrified by Newt Gingrich,” said Dan Schnur, a former GOP campaign strategist who teaches politics at the University of Southern California.

The anti-Gingrich statements have come from conservative columnists, talk show hosts including Ann Coulter, former Reagan administration officials and others. One of the harshest was written by former Sen. Bob Dole, the party’s 1996 presidential nominee.

“I have not been critical of Newt Gingrich but it is now time to take a stand before it is too late,” Dole wrote in the conservative magazine National Review. “If Gingrich is the nominee it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state, and federal offices.”

As speaker from 1995 through 1998, Gingrich “had a new idea every minute and most of them were off the wall,” Dole wrote. He said he struggled against Democrats’ TV attacks in his 1996 campaign, “and in every one of them, Newt was in the ad.”

Gingrich has reacted unevenly to the accusations, sometimes denouncing them, other times wearing them like a badge of honor.

“The Republican establishment is just as much as an establishment as the Democratic establishment, and they are just as determined to stop us,” he told a tea party rally Thursday in central Florida.

The crowd cheered. But lingering near the back was an example of how the Romney campaign is taking advantage of the whacks at Gingrich: GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah. Chaffetz is beloved by many conservatives, and he goes from one Gingrich event to another to tell reporters why he thinks Romney would be a stronger challenger against President Barack Obama in the fall.

Gingrich aide R.C. Hammond confronted Chaffetz on Friday at an event in Del Ray, Fla., noting that some Republican officials criticize such shadowing tactics. Chaffetz defended his presence, saying Gingrich has vowed to show up everywhere Obama campaigns this fall, if several hours later.

Romney has drawn other high-ranking surrogates, with mixed results. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley annoyed some of her tea party supporters when she campaigned throughout her state for Romney, who lost to Gingrich by 12 percentage points.

It’s unclear whether the anti-Gingrich push is driving a new wedge between establishment Republicans and anti-establishment insurgents such as the tea partyers.

“We don’t like the Republican establishment anyway,” said Mark Meckler, a Californian and co-founder of Tea Party Patriots.