Seattle PI / Posted by Joel Connelly

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has weighed in to defend Newt Gingrich just as establishment Republicans in office and the media direct fire at the insurgent Republican presidential candidate.

“Look at Newt Gingrich, what’s going on with him via the establishment’s attacks,” Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, told the Fox Business Network.

“They’re trying to crucify this man and rewrite history and rewrite what it is that he has stood for all these years.”

Gingrich trails President Obama 55-37 percent in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.  But Palin argued that the ex-House Speaker strikes fear both right and left, along with another contender in the GOP race.

“So it’s not just Ron Paul,” she said.  “I believe it’s also Newt Gingrich that the establishment, that the liberal media certainly that the progressives and the Democrats don’t like.”

Palin did describe conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan as “hypocritical” for Noonan’s scathing description of Gingrich as “an angry little attack muffin.”

“That’s the typical hypocrisy stuff in the media that I’ve lived with over a couple of decades in the political arena,” she said.

Palin has also recently lashed out at New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for his remarks critical of Gingrich, saying at one point that Christie has his “panties in a wad.”