Obama's man David Axelrod gets off a good line about Newt Gingrich:

"The higher a monkey climbs on the pole the more you can see his butt."

Axelrod knows nobody could get away with saying that about his master. Not because it isn't true. But because it would be, you know, racist.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Ross Douthat makes an excellent point in an excellent column:

More important for the Republican Party’s purposes, it isn’t 2008 anymore, and conservatives don’t actually need to explode the fantasy of Obama’s eloquence and omnicompetence. The harsh reality of governing has already done that for them. Nobody awaits the president’s speeches with panting anticipation these days, or expects him to slay his opponents with the power of his intellect. Obamamania peaked with the inauguration, and it’s been ebbing ever since.

Newt Gingrich might debate circles around Obama. He might implode spectacularly, making a hot mess of himself while the president keeps his famous cool. But either way, setting up a grand rhetorical showdown seems unlikely to supply a disillusioned country with what it’s looking for from Republicans in 2012.

Conservatives may want catharsis, but the rest of the public seems to mainly want reassurance. They already know Barack Obama isn’t the messiah he was once cracked up to be. What they don’t know is whether they can trust anyone else to do better

In other words, Obama climbed the pole and his butt is out there for the entire country to see.