Gingrich: I’d team up with Santorum

Newt Gingrich, who finished fourth in the Iowa caucuses, said Wednesday he can “absolutely” see himself teaming up with Rick Santorum.

“Of course,” Gingrich told conservative Laura Ingraham on her radio show. “Rick and I have a 20-year friendship. We were both rebels, we both came into this business as reformers. … We’ll both stay in the race for a while, we’ll see how our personalities wear and how our policies and ideas wear.”

Gingrich called it “a long game.”

{mosads}Gingrich, who has been in an ongoing war of words with GOP rival Mitt Romney over campaign advertising, also signaled that he still considers Romney the enemy. 

“I don’t think Romney can get much above 25 percent,” Gingrich said, slapping down Romney’s performance in the Iowa caucuses, where he eked out the win with 25 percent of the vote and an eight-vote margin over Santorum. 

“You take [Rick] Perry, [Michele] Bachmann, Santorum, Gingrich, you get a sense of what a small percentage Romney really represents,” Gingrich said, including himself in the “conservative” field in contrast to Romney and Ron Paul. Paul, according to Gingrich, is “a different kind of person and I don’t know how you would characterize his votes.”

Gingrich also threw a punch at Romney over the expected endorsement of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Romney’s former competition for the 2008 presidential nomination. 

“Congress is at 5 percent approval. Running around getting all the names of people with 5 percent approval doesn’t get you very far,” Gingrich said. “I will stick with Tea Party and grassroots supporters and I will let Mitt Romney gather up all the names in Washington.”