FORT MYERS, Fla. — George Soros, Goldman Sachs, and other
forces of the “establishment” are conspiring to support Mitt
Romney’s presidential campaign, Newt Gingrich warned Republicans
here Monday, as Floridians prepared to go to the polls in their
state’s crucial GOP primary.
Referring to an interview that Soros — a billionaire
notorious for his funding of left-wing causes — gave to Reuters
last week in Davos, Switzerland, Gingrich summarized Soros as
saying, “We think either Obama or Romney’s fine, but Gingrich, he
would change things.” The anti-Gingrich cabal, said the former
House Speaker, also includes investment banking giant Goldman
Sachs, which backed President Obama four years ago and now —
having profited from taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailouts — is
bankrolling Romney’s campaign attack ads. “Those ads are your money
recycled to attack me,” Gingrich told the hundreds gathered outside
Page Field airport here.
He cited no evidence that Goldman Sachs was in cahoots
with Romney, and the opacity of the “super PACs” which are pumping
millions into this Republican primary campaign makes it impossible
either to prove or disprove Gingrich’s depiction of the malevolent
forces arrayed against him. Yet he repeated similar accusations in
different forums throughout the day — on ABC in the morning, on
Fox News in the afternoon, and at each of the five stops on his
final whirlwind tour of the Sunshine State — as if endeavoring to
convince his supporters that they are victims of a vast conspiracy.
Newt seemed to be providing a pre-emptive excuse for what polls
indicate will be a decisive defeat for him in Tuesday’s
winner-take-all primary.
Six polls within the past week have shown Gingrich
trailing Romney by double-digit margins in Florida — the
Real Clear Politics average of Florida polls had Romney’s
margin at 12.5 points Monday — a striking reversal of Gingrich’s
advantage after he beat Romney handily in South Carolina ten days
ago. (See “The
End of Inevitability,” Jan. 22.) The rival campaigns suddenly
seem to have switched roles. Gingrich’s Carolina win was enough to
inspire panic among Romney’s supporters, with
Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post warning that if
Newt got the nomination he would “alienate virtually all
independent voters, lose more than 40 states and put the House
majority in jeopardy.” But as evidence mounted that Romney’s
aggressive full-court Florida attack was succeeding — and after
Gingrich fared poorly in two televised debates last week — it was
Newt and his supporters who pushed the panic button, asserting that
unless conservatives immediately rallied behind Gingrich, the
“Establishment” would conspire to deliver the GOP nomination to
Romney.
Among those who have helped spread that message is former
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who last week
issued a Facebook warning that “the GOP
establishment [is] trying to anoint a candidate without the
blessing of the grassroots” and “using
Alinsky tactics to kneecap Governor Romney’s chief rival.” Palin
yesterday reiterated that charge during an appearance on Andrew
Napolitano’s Fox Business Network program, saying that “those
inside the machine” are ganging up against Gingrich. For the first
time during this campaign, Palin expressed a dismissive attitude
toward another Republican challenger, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick
Santorum, telling Napolitano that the Republican choice is “one or
the other” between Mitt and Newt, adding that it is “naively
idealistic” to think either Santorum or Texas Rep. Ron Paul could
mount a serious challenge to Romney.
Because the Florida primary awards delegates on a
winner-take-all basis, there is no benefit to candidates who can’t
contend for first place here. Paul skipped out of Florida after
last Thursday’s debate, while Santorum was forced to cut short his
campaign in the Sunshine State because of his 3-year-old daughter’s
weekend illness. Both candidates, however, have vowed to continue
the fight in upcoming caucuses and primaries. Santorum picked up
the endorsement of influential
conservative columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin Monday and,
in an appearance in Missouri (which holds a non-binding primary
vote next week),
vowed to avoid “gutter politics” in his campaign. When the
votes are counted tonight in Florida, Santorum will be watching the
results with his supporters in Nevada, where Saturday’s caucuses
will be the next contest on the GOP campaign calendar.
Meanwhile in Florida, the man who looks to be the loser in
this winner-take-all primary was pushing an angry populist message
yesterday to the supporters who gathered at the airport in Fort
Myers. Gingrich warned that the Obama administration was attempting
to impose a “dictatorship of anti-religious secularism,” he
promised to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to
Jerusalem, and he denounced Romney as having “no clue what Reagan
stood for.” (One Romney ad cites Gingrich’s long-ago criticisms of
President Reagan, which Gingrich sought to refute by bringing the
Gipper’s son, conservative talk-show host Michael Reagan, to
campaign for him in Florida.) Gingrich welcomed the endorsement of
Herman Cain — whose Tea Party-backed campaign was derailed by
allegations of sexual misconduct — saying that the Atlanta
businessman’s support would “send a signal that this is a
grassroots populist conservatism versus the establishment.” The
crowd enthusiastically cheered.
“We’re in a very simple campaign,” Gingrich said. “We are
pitting people power against money power. No question — you look
at the list of top ten donors to Mitt Romney, that’s money power.
That is the establishment. Those are the people who would be happy,
as George Soros said, with either Obama or Romney, and they do not
want a conservative. Those are the people who have led the assault
on me over the last couple of weeks, by all sorts of folks whose
number-one goal is to keep power in Washington the way it is
now.”
Gingrich then alluded to New York — that is to say, the
Wall Street financiers who he alleges have bankrolled Romney’s
campaign against him — as having perpetrated a fraud that he
promised to expose. “I want you to know, I do not believe it is
legitimate for the current establishment to preside over the decay
as long as they’re doing well. I think we have an obligation to our
children, to our grandchildren, to fundamentally change Washington
and, frankly, to fundamentally change New York. We deserve to know
the truth about the last four years. We deserve to know what
happened to our money.”
The afternoon sun was shining brightly and, behind
Gingrich, palm trees were swaying in the warm breeze, but he seemed
to see no irony in issuing this dark and chilly warning against the
menace of “money power” to a Republican audience in the Sunshine
State.
