CBS's Rose Scolds Newt: 'Why Are Drudge and Ann Coulter Attacking You?'

On Monday's CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose hammered Newt Gingrich on the issue of the opposition his presidential campaign was receiving from some prominent conservatives: "Why are so many conservatives, including...Drudge and Ann Coulter, attacking you?" Rose also spotlighted how apparently "there are those who say that you [Gingrich] are angry and you want to get even with Romney."

The anchor started relentlessly pursued Gingrich not long after he began the interview. He asked the Drudge and "get even" questions in quick succession after getting the former House Speaker to reply to a recent comment from opponent Mitt Romney. Later, the CBS journalist pounced when the Georgia Republican raised what George Soros said recently, that "there isn't all that much difference" between President Obama and Romney [audio clip available here; video below the jump]:

GINGRICH: ...When Floridians learn that George Soros thinks that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are both okay, but that Newt Gingrich is really a threat because he's a genuine conservative-

ROSE: I don't believe-

GINGRICH: I think, in the next 24 hours, things are going to change-

ROSE: I don't believe, Mr. Speaker, that you think that George Soros's opinion is what's going to be at- the issue in a Republican primary in South Ca [sic]- in Florida.

GINGRICH: I think when you have a left-wing billionaire tell Europeans that he thinks Romney's just fine because he's just as much a part of the establishment as Obama, and that he can live with Romney...I think it's pretty easy to make the case- Romney is a guy who will manage the decay; he's not the guy who's going to change Washington.
 

Rose followed this by returning to the issue of conservatives opposing Gingrich, and dropped the name of a current MSNBC anchor into the mix:
 

ROSE: But I have still not come to an understanding of why so many people that worked with you are concerned about you being the nominee. This is not people from the establishment necessarily. I mean, these are people who were with you, including Joe Scarborough, Tom DeLay-

GINGRICH: Wait a second-

ROSE: And others who were part of what the revolution that Gingrich made.

GINGRICH: Look, take the case of DeLay. I can't imagine anybody in the news media is going to cite Tom DeLay. Tom DeLay represented a fundamentally different approach to authority than I did. He got in enormous trouble for it. You can argue that, in many ways, he was the architect of the 2006 disaster. I am- look, I was a very tough speaker of the House.
 

Earlier in the segment, the CBS anchor raised how former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been coming to Gingrich's defense, and asked, "Do you approve of Sarah Palin talking about what has happened to you as 'Stalin-esque'?"

Two weeks earlier, on the January 17, 2011 edition of the CBS morning show, Rose hinted that the former speaker should apologize for a supposedly racially-tinged comment he recently made: "I want to give you an opportunity, because the point was made...about it's better for black Americans to seek a job than it is to seek food stamps, and many people stepped forward to say, isn't that simply true for all Americans who are desperately looking for jobs?"

The full transcript of Charlie Rose's interview of Newt Gingrich on Monday's CBS This Morning, which aired five minutes into the 7 am Eastern hour, can be found here.