Although Florida Senator and rising Republican star Marco Rubio
has repeatedly refused to endorse a candidate in the Republican
primary, his words this week have done great and perhaps
unrepairable damage to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s
chances of winning the Florida Republican primary and the
Republican nomination for the presidency.
On Tuesday, Gingrich compared his contest against former
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney to the 2010 Florida U.S. Senate
race between Marco Rubio and the liberal (and eventually not
Republican) former Florida Governor Charlie Crist. Rubio would have
none of it, saying “Mitt Romney is no Charlie Crist. Romney is a
conservative, and he was one of the first national Republican
leaders to endorse me. He came to Florida, campaigned hard for me,
and made a real difference in my race.”
Then on Wednesday, Rubio assailed the Gingrich campaign
for running a Spanish-language radio ad aimed at Florida’s
politically important Cuban community, in which Gingrich called
Romney “the most anti-immigration candidate.” Rubio said the ad was
“inaccurate, inflammatory, and doesn’t belong in this campaign.”
Gingrich promptly pulled the ad, after which Rubio offered Gingrich
an olive branch in an interview with CBS: “I think Speaker Gingrich
made the right decision. I’ve known Speaker Gingrich for a long
time, I’m an admirer of him. I think he made the right
choice.”
But the damage was done.
In gently responding to Rubio, Gingrich expressed the
skepticism that many Americans share about the idea of
“self-deportation” * by illegal aliens which Romney
mentioned in Monday’s Republican debate in Tampa. The Speaker
called the idea an “Obama-level fantasy” and said, “I’ve not met
anyone who thinks it’s in touch with reality. People aren’t going
to self-deport.” Perhaps Mr. Gingrich was unaware that in November
his own spokesman said that under Gingrich’s immigration policies
“it’s likely the vast majority of (illegal aliens) would
self-deport.”
If Gingrich was unaware, he certainly isn’t anymore, with
a raft of websites pointing out the apparent hypocrisy, thus
minimizing the damage to Romney for a statement that Hispanic
political commentator Lili Gil
described as leaving the debate audience “intrigued, speechless
and confused.”
In the 24 hours following the Rubio Rumble, Romney’s
betting odds of
winning the Florida primary doubled, from about 40 percent to 80
percent, with Gingrich plummeting from almost 60 percent to 20
percent. (Ron Paul and Rick Santorum combine for under a half a
percent chance of winning Florida.)
Similarly, Romney’s odds of winning the nomination, which
had fallen from 90 percent to just above 60 percent after the South
Carolina primary, rose back to about 85 percent following Rubio’s
two-fold criticism of Gingrich. Gingrich’s nomination odds were cut
in half, from over 20 percent to under 10 percent. (As a measure of
the modest desperation of GOP primary voters, the odds on a Mitch
Daniels nomination briefly spiked from about zero to over 2.5
percent after the Indiana governor gave the Republican response to
President Obama’s State of the Union speech and proved to many why
he was considered
to be one of the Republicans’ best potential
candidates.)
There’s another indirect positive for Romney from Rubio’s
call for the campaigns to tone down the “increasingly heated
rhetoric” between them.
Romney began his campaign acting as if he had already won
the nomination, running much more against Barack Obama than against
any of his Republican challengers. Gingrich, far behind in the
pack, had no choice but to go after the Republican front-runner.
Once Romney lost South Carolina, he had to personally get
negative about Gingrich, no longer able to leave the dirty work to
his Super-PAC. Romney showed that (unlike Gingrich) he’s not adept
at wearing the black hat. Meanwhile, Newt seems to have been born
to be the antagonist.
To the extent that Rubio’s cautionary words will force the
candidates, at least in Florida, to spend more time on positive
messages and on attacking Obama instead of each other, he’ll be
forcing Romney right back into his strength. And while offering a
positive message and going after Obama isn’t exactly a weakness for
Gingrich, it hasn’t been as productive a strategy for him as
reacting indignantly toward attacks against him has been. If every
action produces an equal and opposite reaction, what is Gingrich to
do if Romney doesn’t act forcefully against him?
Gingrich’s rapid fall in betting odds is mostly, but not
entirely, due to Marco Rubio. Anti-Gingrich long knives have come
out in recent days, some offering a story that Gingrich’s
rhetorical tying himself to Ronald Reagan is unsupportable, at
least in degree. Elliott Abrams, former assistant secretary of
state for Reagan, was particularly aggressive:
“Gingrich was voluble and certain in predicting that Reagan’s
policies would fail, and in all of this he was dead wrong.” And
further, “… at the height of the bitter struggle with the
Democratic leadership Gingrich chose to attack… Reagan.” That’s as
close to Republican political excommunication as one is likely to
see, especially against someone whom most people do consider to be
a conservative. For his part, Gingrich points to past recognition
by Nancy Reagan
and the endorsement of Michael Reagan
as proof of his being an intellectual and political heir to the
Gipper. But again, some damage is done.
Gingrich’s post-South Carolina momentum was substantial,
though not necessarily enough to take him to the nomination even
had the Rubio dust-up and other attacks against the Speaker not
occurred. A Quinnipiac University nationwide poll taken just before the recent
Florida kerfuffle showed a strong gain for Gingrich, but not enough
to put him ahead of Romney.
More importantly, the poll reiterates the consistent
survey results that Republican voters are more interested in
beating Barack Obama than in nominating the perfectly principled
candidate, or the candidate with whom they most agree. And this
makes Thursday’s Quinnipiac poll release extremely important:
“Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney runs even with President
Barack Obama 45 - 45 percent in Florida, while the president holds
a strong 50 - 39 percent lead over former House Speaker Newt
Gingrich.”
Romney’s results are down from small leads he held over
Obama in January and last September, but he’s taken some major
punches and still runs even with Obama which some would say is
impressive and important. Meanwhile, not only does the poll showing
Obama crushing Gingrich in the must-win state of Florida, it
actually has Obama leading Gingrich by more than he leads either
former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum or Texas Congressman Ron
Paul.
Republicans’ focus on “electability,” despite that term’s
driving many conservatives to distraction, explains Thursday’s
Rasmussen Reports poll
results showing a huge swing among likely Florida GOP voters:
In a survey taken Wednesday night, after the Rubio Rumble, Romney
led Gingrich by 39 percent to 31 percent, this just four days after
Gingrich stormed out to a 9 point lead over Romney following the
Speaker’s remarkable comeback victory in South Carolina.
The poll shows a similar reversal in Floridians’ views of
the candidates’ electability, with Romney now 15 points ahead of
Gingrich in that measure, whereas Gingrich had a 3-point lead on
the same question four days ago. Rick Santorum comes in at 12
percent, with Ron Paul at the end of the line with 9 percent.
Unlike what we saw in prior contests during this campaign season, a
surprisingly small seven percent of those surveyed are
undecided.
As tremendous as South Carolina’s primary victory was for
Newt Gingrich, his momentum is fading rapidly and without another
unforced error from Romney (such as his amateurish response to the
debate questions about his tax returns), it is not obvious that
Gingrich can or will recover.
Marco Rubio may like and respect Newt Gingrich, but the
young senator from Florida may have just ended the former Speaker’s
chances of winning the Florida primary or the Republican
nomination.
————
* The idea of self-deportation is
not the fantasy that Gingrich suggests, with compelling data, even
accepted
by the anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies, showing
that “the illegal population declined 13.7 percent (1.7 million)
from a peak of 12.5 million in the summer of 2007 to 10.8 million
in the first quarter of 2009” and that “the decline was caused by
both fewer illegal immigrants coming and an increase in the number
returning home.” More recent data
confirm the dramatic reduction of illegal immigration into the
US and increase in illegal aliens, particularly from Mexico,
returning home. To be sure, the primary driver is economics rather
than enforcement, but it proves the basic point that with the right
incentives in place illegal aliens will “self-deport.”
