"I think replacing the regime before they get a nuclear weapon without a war beats replacing the regime with war, which beats allowing them to have a nuclear weapon. Those are your three choices."

I'm not even sure what that means. Assassination of every mullah in Iran? What? But just as Bush did, Newt believes in pre-emptive prevention; that is, assume the worst and start wars to stop it, which in the process creates a worse worst case.

Hannity and Luntz didn't stop there. They went on to extol Newt as "the historian" in an effort to distract their audience from the Real Newt Gingrich.

HANNITY: What about the issue, you know, it's funny, I think he joked about, you know, I'm zany, I'm using using mild words, and then he used some very tough words here, that it was mindless and especially irrational, the President's policy, I believe at that point it was on energy.

Obviously he's responding to Mitt Romney. When he's on stage and obviously he's risen in the polls because of these debates, when he's on stage does he counter that argument that narrative that his opponents are trying to advance on him?

LUNTZ: Absolutely. When he's playing the historian, that's why he went from 4 percent in the polls up to over 30 percent. But when he's put in the position of politician and on defense, that's the negative that he wants to try to change. For him the narrative is, is it about his ideas, or is is about his politics. The ideas win. The politics don't.

C'mon. We all know the real Newt. He's the guy who shut down the government in the 90s when Clinton was president, has never been shy about engaging in self-serving government activity, and rewrites history whenever he feels like it. Still, this is not about Newt the person. This is about Newt the candidate, and what gets Hannity hot and flustered over him isn't what he says but how he says it. I pulled a video clip from the debate before this one but didn't get around to posting on it that shows how that works.