From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. And here's presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich defending his attacks against presidential hopeful Mitt Romney.

Crony capitalism, where people pay each other off at the expense of the rest of the country, is not free enterprise.

And raising questions about that is not wrong.

To drive home that point, the Gingrich Superpack has just released a 28-minute video polemic,

excoriating Romney as a corporate raider who callously killed jobs as head of Bain Capital,

a private equity firm. Ed Kilgore in the New Republic called it

a heat-seeking missile aimed directly at the white working class id. Certainly it was a gift to Romney

competitors like Texas Governor Rick Perry. And I happen to think that companies like Bain Capital

could have come in and help these companies if they truly were venture capitalist,

but they're not.

They're vulture capitalist.

The interesting part in all this is that this unexpected boom to Romney haters, playing on

computer screens everywhere and backed up by political ads all over South Carolina, has created

a different split in the GOP than we've seen between old-line

Republicans and tea partiers on Capitol Hill. Warring Republicans seem to be engaged, however

politically motivated, in a scorched earth argument over the impact of unbridled market capitalism.

A temporary blip, maybe. But hearing such arguments in the

mouths of conservatives does suggest to change in the wind. Historian Charles Postal says it could

merely be a newt-generated dust storm that will pass. His goal here is simply to hurt Romney.

And I'm not sure there's any lasting significance to this,

except there's a reason why Newt Ginkrich is considered a bomb thrower in his party.

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