TAMPA — Mitt Romney scored an impressive victory in Tuesday’s
Florida primary, winning by such a decisive margin that the
networks called the race as soon as the polls closed. And his
choice of this city as the site of his celebration was not
accidental.
‘When we gather back here seven months from now here in
Tampa for our convention, we will be a united party with a winning
ticket for America,” the former Massachusetts governor said in his
victory speech at the Convention Center downtown. Saying that
Democrats believed the tough fight for the GOP nomination would
leave Republicans “divided and weak,” Romney said, “A competitive
primary does not divide us, it prepares us.”
Romney’s appeals to party unity surely rang hollow to
supporters of Newt Gingrich, who was on the receiving end of a
weeklong barrage of attack ads from Romney’s campaign and the
Florida winner’s so-called “super PAC,” Restore Our Future. Between
the two entities, Team Romney spent something like $17 million on
TV and radio ads in Florida, compared to about $5 million spent by
Gingrich and the pro-Gingrich “super PAC,” Winning Our Future. The
vast majority of the ads by both camps were of the attack variety,
and media analyst
Ken Goldstein pronounced it “the most
negative campaign ever.”
If Romney proved nothing else in Florida, he proved what a
3-to-1 ratio in campaign spending can accomplish in a Republican
primary. Gingrich came into the Sunshine State10 days ago fresh
from a triumphant victory in South Carolina, leading Romney in
Florida by nine points according to a
Rasmussen poll. When the votes were
counted Tuesday night, however, Romney won Florida by
14
points and, in terms of delegates to the
GOP convention, the result was even more lopsided than that: 50 to
zero in the winner-take-all primary. And in his victory speech here
in Tampa, Romney sounded very confident that he will return to
accept the nomination in August, ignoring his Republican rival and
focusing his attacks on the incumbent Democrat as if the general
election campaign had already begun. “My leadership
will end the Obama era and begin a new era of American prosperity,”
Romney told his cheering supporters, promising to “build an America
where hope is a new job with a paycheck, not a faded word on an old
bumper sticker.”
Eighty miles away in Orlando, Gingrich drew applause from
his supporters by describing the various executive orders he would
enact on the day of his inauguration as president. While supporters
behind him held signs saying “46 States to Go,” Gingrich addressed
himself to “the elite media,” promising he would
“contest every place and we’re going to win and we’ll
be in Tampa as the nominee.”
In Tampa, however, Gingrich’s boasting was greeted with
derision by Eric Ferhnstrom, a top advisor to Romney. “He’s not
even on the ballot in 46 states,” said Ferhnstrom, noting that
Gingrich failed to qualify for the ballot in next Tuesday’s primary
in Missouri, which will thus be essentially a two-man contest
between Romney and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.
Ferhnstrom said he expects that Romney’s most formidable opponent
in Saturday’s Nevada caucuses will not be Gingrich, but former
Texas Rep. Ron Paul. And neither Gingrich nor Santorum qualified
for the GOP primary ballot in Virginia, which votes on “Super
Tuesday” March 6, which will thus also pit Romney in a head-to-head
match against Paul.
Gingrich didn’t bother explaining any of that to his
supporters in Orlando. “It’s now clear that this will be a
two-person race between the conservative leader and the
Massachusetts moderate, ” he said, obviously attempting to discount
Santorum’s claim to be the “consistent conservative” in the 2012
Republican field. Santorum left Florida early, returning home to
get a copy of his income taxes demanded by the media, and also to
attend to an illness of his 3-year-old daughter, Bella. Santorum
spent Tuesday night with supporters in Las Vegas, where he
told
CNN that the expensive Florida
contest was “a death match that I didn’t want to get
involved in.” Santorum said Gingrich’s lopsided loss might inspire
Republican voters “to look at this race now and say if you don’t
want Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich doesn’t have what it takes to
win this, let’s give someone else a shot.” Santorum said in a
Tuesday interview on CNN that his campaign raised more than $4
million in January, boosted by his victory in the Iowa caucuses,
and was now raising money at the pace of $200,000 a day.
Romney’s rivals will have to continue their campaigns now
without benefit of the free national exposure provided by televised
debates. There were six debates in January — two each in New
Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida — but three weeks will
elapse before the next TV debate, Feb. 22 in Arizona. Furthermore,
a glance at the campaign calendar shows a three-week gap between
next Tuesday’s contests — the non-binding primary vote in
Missouri, plus caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota — and the Feb.
28 primaries in Arizona and Michigan. This hole in the GOP calendar
is the result of Florida’s decision to leapfrog its primary from
March to January, a decision that scrambled the entire campaign
schedule. (See, “Why
Does Florida Hate America?” Sept. 30.) As
originally approved by the Republican National Committee, the
schedule would have begun Feb. 7 with the Iowa caucuses, with
Florida voting on the first Tuesday in March. Instead, by the time
January was over, four states had already voted and as February
arrived at midnight, Romney was riding high as the winner of the
biggest prize so far.
There were many conservatives who suspected that Florida’s
decision to switch its primary to January was a move orchestrated
by the GOP establishment, intended to achieve exactly this result.
But there was no talk of sinister conspiracies late last night on
the patio of the Marriott Hotel in downtown Tampa, where a young
Romney campaign staffer sat relaxing in the warm night air and
remarked that his flight was scheduled to depart at 8:30 Wednesday
morning. “On to Vegas, baby,” said the Romney staffer. And he was
smiling like a winner.
