JACKSONVILLE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Fla.
Dan Balz drifted out of the Champions sports bar adjacent to the Tampa Marriott last night just as I was heading in to order a cheeseburger.
“Whaddya think?” I said.
“Good night for Romney,” he said.
And that was really all that could be said. There was no drama, no suspense, no surprise in Tuesday’s result, and yet I had to deliver a column about this tedious Florida primary for The American Spectator.
We were standing there discussing this when a man recognized Balz. “Hey, you look familiar,” the guy said. “Where do I know you from?”
Dan Balz, Washington Post, semi-famous, because he occasionally shows up on TV shows talking about politics. Whereas, by contrast, I’m kind of an obscure cult figure, known by a comparative handful of right-wing political junkies on the Internet. Less notorious than Charles Manson, but perhaps slightly better known than whoever plays center field for the Houston Astros, unless you’re from Houston or a baseball fan.
There was no time to think about such stuff last night. I got my burger and a Corona and went out to the patio of the Marriott — next to the canal, underneath the palms in the warm Florida breeze — to finish my column. There was very little in the way of Final Wisdom:
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.” . . .
Read the whole thing. There is lots more I could say about this trip, but they’ve just called final boarding and, as usual, there simply isn’t enough time to do what I would like to do. Because I’m still “Not Good Enough for BlogCon.” And probably never will be.
TAMPA, Fla.
Polls just closed in the western panhandle of Florida, and there is no need for suspense regarding the result. It has been pretty much a universal certainty for the past week that Romney was going to win this thing pretty easily, and the only question is the final margin of victory.
In fact, I’m writing this post in Naples at 4 o’clock in the afternoon — four hours before the polls close — because I’ve got a three-hour drive to reach the Mitt Romney RINO-tastic™ Florida Primary Victory Celebration at the Tampa Convention Center, and wasn’t sure if traffic might delay my arrival, preventing me from being the first to report this URGENT BREAKING NEWS.
Ditto that. Newt should drop out and endorse Santorum. Otherwise, he should stop blaming his failures on other people.
UPDATE: Now on the scene at the Press Filing Center at the Tampa Convention Center, where the TVs are on CNN, which called the election for Romney as soon as the polls closed in the Panhandle, by which time nearly 60% of the precincts were already reporting:
That 16-point gap is likely to narrow as the Panhandle precincts report.
UPDATE II: Mitt sends out his wife, Ann, to give thanks to their supporters and to introduce Mitt.
UPDATE III: Very much a general-election speech from Mitt, taking aim at Obama, promising an America “where hope is a new job and a paycheck, not a word on a fading bumper sticker.”
Romney also said: “A competitive primary does not divide us, it prepares us and we will win. 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.”
It is reported that Gingrich won’t even spend the night in Florida, and won’t do the morning talk shows tomorrow, but will fly tonight to Nevada, where the caucuses are Saturday. Lots of Mormons in Nevada.
UPDATE IV: A couple of photos:
TV satellite trucks parked under the palm trees outside the convention center.
Inside the press filing center.
UPDATE V: At Newt’s speech, they’re holding up signs that say, “46 States to Go.” Just ran in to top Romney advisor Eric Ferhnstrom, who said, “He’s not even on the ballot in 46 more states.”
Ferhnstrom said they expect Ron Paul to be Romney’s chief opponent in the Nevada caucuses, and said Missouri (which holds a non-binding primary on Tuesday) will be a two-man race between Romney and Santorum, because Gingrich isn’t on the ballot there.
In case you’re wondering, the next debate is Feb. 22 in Arizona.
Newt Gingrich in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday Jan. 30, 2012
NAPLES, Fla.
This will be my last day here in the posh condo which Dan Collins has so generously made available as the Florida headquarters of the National Affairs Desk. Tonight I head up to Tampa to cover RINO Fest 2012Mitt Romney’s victory celebration, and then I must find someplace else to get a few hours sleep before leaving out from Jacksonville on Wednesday afternoon.
Before I do all that, however, I must contemplate the scapegoating, blame-shifting and excuse-making by which Newt Gingrich is attempting to provide a pre-emptive explanation of his looming defeat here in Florida. Among other things, Newt is once again pointing the finger at Rick Santorum:
GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says rival Rick Santorum should take a look at the poll numbers, which show Gingrich beating him, and drop out.
“The longer conservatives stay split, the harder it’s going to be for us to [beat Romney],” Gingrich said on FOX and Friends on Tuesday. “And I think that we risk not being able to beat Obama unless we get a conservative. I have to win the nomination.” Santorum is sapping conservative votes from Gingrich, the former House speaker said.
Oddly, Gingrich didn’t appear as principled on the subject of conservative consolidation when Santorum won Iowa and Gingrich finished fourth, nor when Santorum narrowly edged Gingrich for fourth place in New Hampshire. If he was concerned about a conservative sacrificing to make sure a conservative alternative had the strength to beat Mitt Romney at that time, Gingrich didn’t pull a muscle leaping out of his chair to volunteer.
One of the basic traits of narcissism is an ability to accept blame for one’s own failures, which leads to scapegoating, the attempt to externalize blame in order to protect the narcissist’s glorified mental self-image.
Newt came into Florida riding a wave of momentum from South Carolina and, if it is true that the Romney machine poured out an unprecedented onslaught of attack ads here, it is also true that Gingrich himself reacted badly. Gingrich had his worst two debates of the entire yearlong campaign, and seemed cranky and irritable all week. But he can’t admit his own complicity in his problems — as if Freddie Mac forced him to take that money — and so what went wrong must always be blamed on somebody else, even if that somebody is Rick Santorum, who barely campaigned in Florida.
Narcissism is a pathology closely connected to paranoia, and the spooky vibes of yesterday’s Gingrich rally in Fort Myers were enough to put me in mind of Richard Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Watch this video in which Gingrich promotes the belief that both he and his listeners are victims of “money power”:
“We’re in a very simple campaign. 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. 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 idea of usurpation of authority by an illegitimate, selfish, decadent plutocracy — who strive to conceal the truth about their malign manipulations — is a very familiar theme in populist demagoguery. Without denying the possibility that there are elements of truth in such a claim, the implications of this rhetoric are scary, and there is nothing Reaganesque about this kind of embittered rant against “money power,” promoting the sense of victimhood at the hands of an all-powerful “establishment.” Yesterday’s rally was the subject of my American Spectator column today:
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. . . .
Read the whole thing. It is impossible for me to think that the American people will be fooled by Gingrich’s playing of the victim card, or that they will accept Gingrich’s absurd claim that he lost Florida because Rick Santorum refused to “consolidate” behind Newt’s candidacy.
I’ve got to tidy up this condo before I leave today. That could take a while, considering the deplorable conditions at the National Affairs Desk:
FORT MYERS, Fla. 6:51 p.m. ET: During his speech today at Page Field, Newt Gingrich spun a conspiratorial view of the opposition to him, saying that Mitt Romney’s campaign is using “recycled” bailout money to attack him.
Saying that Goldman Sachs chose Barack Obama in 2008, Gingrich said the giant Wall Street bank — using taxpayer funds from bailouts — had “recycled” that money into support for Mitt Romney’s campaign. Gingrich said that, if elected president, he would request “a thorough audit” to find out “where the money went.”
Gingrich also referenced remarks by international financier George Soros critical of his campaign. Soros, Gingrich said, was “in Europe, and he’s explaining to Europeans the American campaign … And so Soros says, you know, we think either Obama or Romney’s fine, but Gingrich, he would change things.” Gingrich said, “They are uncomfortable with me and they should be.”
I’m sitting here comparing notes with Jeff Briscoe from Port Charlotte, whose site is Report Bucket. Neither of us seems to have the Goldman Sachs conspiracy remarks on video — I switched between photo and video mode during the speech — but during the speech, I provided an open phone link for Pete Da Tech Guy who transcribed much of it live, and he provides these direct quotes: “Goldman Sacks is very uncomfortable with me. . . . Those ads are your money recycled to attack me.”
Gingrich described his campaign as one of “grassroots populist conservatism” versus “The Establishment.” He cited the fact that Herman Cain appeared with him today here and elsehwere on the campaign trail, and also that Todd Palin has agreed to record a message of support for automated get-out-the-vote phone calls.
* * * PREVIOUSLY (2:40 p.m. ET) * * *
Sitting here at a McDonald’s on Colonial Boulevard a half-mile from Page Field, where Newt Gingrich and Michael Reagan will hold a “grassroots rally” at 3 p.m. I’m not expecting much of a crowd for a mid-afternoon event on a Monday, but maybe I’ll be surprised. There were already three TV satellite trucks at the site when I cruised by about 1:3o p.m., and there were lots of cops preparing for a heavy security presence.
It’s been a bad week for Newt and I frankly don’t believe the Insider Advantage poll showing Newt within five. If you look at the Real Clear Politics average, there are five other Florida polls in the past five days showing Mitt winning by anywhere from 11 to 20 points. The latest Quinnipiac poll, with Romney up by 14 points, is about average. So if Romney wins by less than 10, it would be surprising.
The Gingrich campaign isn’t taking reporters on their charter flight on Monday to travel from Pensacola to Miami with stops along the way, destinations that are physically impossible to get to by car in a day.
The reason?
Campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond says he’s ticked off after several media outlets opted not to get on a charter Saturday night.
“I have better things to do than complain with you guys about the cost of flights,” Hammond said when asked why the Monday charter was canceled.
The campaign is also not taking press with them to Nevada on Tuesday night after the Florida primary after initially saying they would be included.
Read the whole thing. It seems that the networks thought the charter rates they were being charged by the Gingrich campaign were too high. So there’s a little inside-baseball camapign stuff for you.
Rick Santorum is getting a head start on the rest of the field by campaigning today in Missouri and Minnesota, and will have an event Tuesday night in Las Vegas, where the caucuses are Saturday.
Mitt Romney at Naples rally, Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012
NAPLES, Fla.
Attention young conservatives: Your grandma loves Mitt Romney.
The phenomenal shift in the polls here in the Sunshine State — which has provoked much commentary and analysis about “strategy” and “messaging” — may in fact be little more complicated than that. And the massive crowd that turned out in downtown Naples today to hear and see Mitt was certainly evidence of how real Romney’s Florida surge is.
This photo was shot from the camera platform, looking back toward Fifth Avenue, and the crowd overflowed in all directions. The camera platform was about 150 feet from the stage, and the area between the platform and the stage was likewise packed to overflowing. While I’m not an expert at estimating crowd sizes, I can say with confidence that this crowd was what the experts call ginormous.
OK, so what’s Mitt’s secret? Let me put it in the simplest possible terms: Sex appeal. This will elicit a groan from ideologues who have spent the past year proclaiming that Mitt is a gutless flip-flopper, the worst RINO in the history of RINO-dom. Yet if you set aside mere politics long enough to see the two Florida frontrunners as the average Republican voter sees them, it is hard to miss the contrast between Mitt — the tall, lean multimillionaire entrepreneur with dark hair and chiseled features — and Newt, the pudgy intellectual.
Maybe you don’t judge presidential candidates by such standards, but it makes a lot of difference to Republican grandmas, and there are lots of Republican grandmas in Florida. And here’s some video that helps explain a little more of Newt’s problem with the affluent residents of retirement communities in the state that has been dubbed “God’s Waiting Room”:
“There was a time back in high school that a girl I knew in elementary school became much more interesting. You see, Ann and I went to the same elementary school. She was in second grade, I was in fourth. I didn’t notice her then. But when she was just about 16, I noticed in a big way. We were at a party together at a friend’s house. She had come with someone else. I went to her date and I said, ‘Look, I live closer to Ann than you do. Can I give her a ride home for you?’ He said, ‘Sure.’ We’ve been going steady ever since. My sweetheart, Ann Romney.”
After Mitt said that, I walked over to talk to another reporter, whose comment was: “Zing! He’s killing him!”
You see? Mitt didn’t even have to name Newt in order to emphasize the contrast: Mitt’s still with his high-school sweetheart, with whom he’s been “going steady” since 1965, while Newt is on Wife No. 3, with whom he had an affair while still married to Wife No. 2.
Maybe if you’re under 40, that kind of thing doesn’t matter much — Who are we to judge? — but to your mother or grandmother, raised on old-fashioned “family values” conservatism, it matters a lot. Put yourself in Grandma’s orthopedic shoes when she reads a headline like this:
Whoa! Newt wants to talk about “character”? Ever heard an old proverb about glass houses, Mister Speaker? Those grannies in Florida aren’t buying your act. And if my ideological under-40 readers don’t mind, this is perhaps an appropriate time to quote the esteemed founder of The American Spectator, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.:
Newt, like Bill, has a proclivity for girl hopping. It is not as egregious as Bill’s, but then Newt is not as drop-dead beautiful. His public record is already besmeared with tawdry divorces, and there are private encounters with the fair sex that doubtless will come out. If I have heard of some, you can be sure the Democrats have heard of more.
Forgive my editor for his unseemly insinuation, but rest assured that Bob Tyrrell is certainly not the only conservative who has “heard of some.” There are other conservatives — people whose names you would recognize — who have made similar intimations to me.
Michelle Malkin has never said any such thing, but have you ever wondered why she hates Newt so much? I have.
The problem, as I see it, is that so many True Conservatives have allowed themselves to be persuaded that the frontrunner fight between Mitt and Newt represents the only choice in this election. But while I was at the Romney rally, I encounted two women — including Naples city council woman Teresa Heitman — who say that Florida voters should consider another candidate:
Bella Santorum was admitted to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Saturday night because she has pneumonia in both of her lungs, according to campaign aides. . . .
Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, on Sunday afternoon, tweeted a message of support for the Santorum family.
“Thank you, Rick and Karen Santorum, for living the Christ-like example of sacrifice and right priorities. Nothing is more precious or important than the life of an innocent child. Our prayers are with Bella, a perfect child in an imperfect world,” she said. “God bless the beautiful Santorum family.”
It is not too late, I would argue, for those True Conservatives who have convinced themselves that Newt is The Only Alternative to Mitt to change their minds and reconsider the possibility of supporting a Republican candidate who lives his conservative principles.
NAPLES, Fla.
This morning I drove to Waffle House for breakfast — 5-ounce New York strip steak, two eggs over medium, hashbrowns, wheat toast, large orange juice and coffee, $11.71 — and the waitress had a tattoo on her neck.
Enduring the midday sun, Lynn Ellwood smiled and said “good morning” to dozens of early voters Thursday at the library on Orange Blossom Drive in North Naples. The poster in her lap said “Romney.”
“This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this,” said Ellwood, 72, a retired speech pathologist and businesswoman from Baltimore. Before last week, she had never so much as passed out a handbill.
“I was so horrified when (Newt Gingrich) won South Carolina that I decided I’ve got to do something,” Ellwood said. “This seems like the most important election of my lifetime.” . . .
The story never tells us why Lynn Ellwood hates Newt so much, but at the end, Wolford includes this:
Even Ellwood — who dislikes Gingrich enough to spend a few hours on a folding chair outside the library holding a poster that she concedes may not actually be effective — could vote for Gingrich if he was the nominee.
“If I didn’t vote for him, I’d be effectively voting for Obama,” she said. “I would have to think about it. And I would have to hold my nose.”
And in between, Wolford finds a Santorum voters:
For Barbara A. Crowe, 80, of Naples, abortion is a deal-breaker, and she questions the sincerity of Gingrich and Romney when they say they are anti-abortion.
“Once you see and hear Rick Santorum, he’s absolutely true blue,” said Crowe, who voted early for the former Pennsylvania senator. “He’s a family man. He’s the core of the American values. He represents that for me.”
Figures made available to The Associated Press showed Romney was spending $2.8 million to air television commercials in the final week of the Florida campaign. In addition, a group supporting him, Restore Our Future, was spending $4 million more, for a combined total of $6.8 million.
By contrast, Gingrich was spending about $700,000, and Winning Our Future, a group backing him, an additional $1.5 million. That was about one-third the amount for the pro-Romney tandem.
From a pro-Santorum perspective, this is good news: The two frontrunners unloading about $9 million combined on Florida, a winner-take-all state that only one will win, which leaves them with that much less money for the fight ahead while Santorum’s low-budget campaign — which has spent next to nothing in the Sunshine State — concentrates its resources elsewhere.
Two new polls show Romney pulling away toward a double-digit victory in Florida. Byron York reports on the latest Rasmussen poll that shows Romney beating Gingrich by 16 points, 44-28, while an NBC/Marist poll has Romney up by 15 points, 42-27.
Remember that Florida is the first closed primary — Republicans only — of the 2012 campaign, and the apparently high level of resistance to Newt may indicate that some conservatives have underestimated the number of Lynn Ellwoods in the GOP electorate.
It’s time for me to get to downtown Naples for the big Mitt Romney rally, but first I wanted to share this video tour of the posh condo which my friend Dan Collins has made available to me as Florida headquarters for the National Affairs Desk this weekend:
Dan’s father wants to sell this condo and, as much as I’d like to make it the permanent headquarters of my Worldwide New Media Empire, (a) it’s probably a wee bit out of my price range, and (b) this is an “adults only” community and I’ve got six kids, and my wife probably doesn’t want to get rid of them just yet.
So if you know someone who’s in the market for a lovely South Florida condo, tell them to contact Dan Collins.
NAPLES, Fla.
Does anyone else remember — because I do — how the Perrybots used to claim that anyone who supported Herman Cain was, in effect, supporting Mitt Romney? I even had friends who supported Perry tell me that Cain wasn’t “really” running for president but was aiming for a Cabinet position in a future Romney administration. Well, my friends owe me an apology now:
Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain endorsed Newt Gingrich Saturday at an event in West Palm Beach, Florida.
“I hereby officially and enthusiastically endorse Newt Gingrich for president of the United States,” Cain said during a meeting of the Palm Beach County Republican Party.
Cain cited the former House speaker’s “bold ideas” as the basis for his choice, saying Gingrich wasn’t afraid to propose big ideas that would benefit the nation, even if they invited the ridicule of his rivals.
“There are many reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is that I know that Speaker Gingrich is a patriot,” Cain said. “Speaker Gingrich is not afraid of bold ideas and I also know that Speaker Gingrich is running for president and going through this sausage grinder. I know what this sausage grinder is all about. I know that he is going through this sausage grinder because he cares about the future of the United States of America.”
Of course, the Perrybots won’t apologize for slandering Cain’s supporters. The Perrybots were wrong about everything, but they keep acting as if those of us who were right owe them an apology. I guess I should let it go, but I’m haunted by memories of their graceless arrogance.
At one point Saturday afternoon, I looked at the campaign schedule and thought about driving to West Palm Beach for that event where Cain endorsed Gingrich, but it was a two-and-a-half hour drive and I was too exhausted after a day spent coping with connectivity issues. So I took a four-hour nap, woke up and went to McDonald’s for a burger and fries.
