Mitt vs. Newt: Fight for Grassroots

01 February 2012 |permalink | email article

Florida’s primary four years ago was decisive for John McCain, but Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee fought on. When the polls closed Tuesday night, Romney was below 50%. While impressive he was unlikely to wind up with an outright majority of the vote. What’s very clear, despite a distant second-place showing, in which he called Romney a “Massachusetts moderate,” Newt Gingrich, as he said in recent days, will battle all the way to the Republican convention late this summer in Tampa. By any account the Florida campaign has been the most nasty many veteran correspondents can recall. Many likened Romney’s carpet-bombing political tactics to that which destroyed Dresden in World War II—13,000 ads to 200. But hardline conservatives and tea party activists detest establishment elites and will coalesce around Gingrich. Negative campaigning will become far worst leading up to Super Tuesday in March. This month, organization, not debates, will dominate. Romney is already under intense attack by talk radio and Fox News with Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin leading the charge to extent the campaign to June. The nomination battle now shifts to the Nevada caucus on Saturday followed by other states. The contrast in both candidates after the polls closed was striking—Romney spoke first and basically repeated Obamacare attacks; Gingrich dubbed his as a “people’s campaign,” taking about his first acts as president, canceling 44’s initiatives, issuing executive orders and stopping just short of the lunar station.

Quotable

HBO’s upcoming movie, “Game Change,” and based on bestseller by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, zeroes in on John McCain’s failed 2008 presidential run. It paints a less than flattering picture of his running mate, Sarah Palin. McCain adviser Steve Schmidt, played by Woody Harrelson, says at one point, “Oh my God, what have we done?”....Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a member of the Republican Party until 2010, and now a registered independent, said he will not rule out voting for President Obama in November. He told CNN an improving economy is one reason…The right-leaning Rasmussen daily tracking poll Tuesday showed Obama beating Romney 47% to 42%, while crushing Gingrich, 50% to 37%....Speculation is intense that longtime California Republican David Dreier, elected in the Reagan sweep in 1980, and chair of the House Rules Committee, is left without a district because of redistricting and will retire.

 

 

 

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