Professional Romney apologist and Washington Post conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin notes that, from the way he was talking in Sunday’s debate, Gingrich sounds like he may have broken a commandment new to the 2012 election: Thou shalt not communicate with your Super PAC. It seems that that the former House Speaker was so keen on holding an anti-Romney ad above Romney’s head that he forgot it would be illegal for him to know the ad’s contents.

Winning Our Future, a PAC not affiliated with the Gingrich campaign but supporting him, recently purchased the 27-minute film that attacks Mitt Romney’s record of job-creation at Bain Capital. Though all of the GOP field consists of professed free-marketeers, Gingrich, Huntsman and others have taken shots at the former investment banker for downsizing underperforming assets and thereby, in effect, firing people. That’s why Gingrich talks about getting government out of the way and then puts on his Noam Chomsky cap to tell Romney he ought to “give back all the money he earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain.”

Rubin writes:

Gingrich said, “When the 27 and a half minute movie comes out, I hope it’s accurate. I– I– I– I can say, publicly, I hope that the Super PAC runs an accurate movie about Bain. It’ll be based on establishment newspapers, like the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Barron’s, Bloomberg News, and I hope it is totally accurate. And then people can watch the 27 and a half minutes of his career at Bain and decide for themselves.” … You can judge for yourself whether Gingrich said he hopes the ad would contain those sources or whether he seemed to know what the sourcing of the yet-to-be-released ad is. But, I suppose the proof will be in the pudding. If the super PAC ad does use these “establishment” newspaper sources to make its case there will be lots of questions: How did Gingrich know? And when did he know it?

During the brief interview in which the Gingrich spokesman proves to be as fluent in sophistry and doublespeak as his boss, he informs Rubin that Gingrich was just “talking about what he hopes the film will have for a standard of accuracy.” Yeah, sure.

The American Spectator’s Quin Hillyer notes that Gingrich called Romney a “liar” for not admitting this sort of knowledge. He continues:

This quite literally calls for a federal investigation. There is probable cause to believe coordination occurred, based on Gingrich’s own words. Shouldn’t somebody subpoena his phone records, or something? Again, if he did coordinate, it would be a clear and unambiguous violation of federal law. It might be a stupid law, but it IS law. And there really does seem as if there is no other explanation for how he knows the sourcing for an ad whose contents he is not even supposed to know about.

Over at National Review, Jay Nordlinger asks, “since when do conservative Republicans denigrate private-sector experience?” Judging by Gingrich’s unprincipled, potentially illegal attacks and the smug way he held the movie over Romney’s head, the answer has more to do with his ego than anything else.