The Hill News

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, rather than outright attack rival candidate Mitt Romney as a flip-flopper or rub the former Massachusetts governor's healthcare model in his face, took a "faint praise" swipe at Romney on Friday. 

"If you want a manager, I think Mitt's a very competent manager. I think that he tends to manage within whatever he thinks the realities are," Gingrich said on the Laura Ingraham radio show. "So when he was governor of Massachusetts he recognized that 85 percent of the legislature was Democrat and he recognized the state was pretty liberal and he managed accordingly."

Gingrich declined to mention what critics of Romney usually mention when discussing his time as governor of Massachusetts â€" the state's healthcare law, which in many ways resembles the national one implemented by the Obama administration.

{mosads}Ingraham asked if Gingrich thinks Romney is a conservative.

"I'll let the vote! rs decide," Gingrich said.

On Friday, a new McClatchy-Marist poll found Gingrich, a former House Speaker (R-Ga.), in the front end of the Republican field, trailing only Romney. The poll found Romney leads with 23 percent, followed by Gingrich at 19 percent and Herman Cain at 17 percent.