The historic 2000 presidential recount in Florida solidified the Sunshine State's reputation as the biggest of swing states in presidential contests. But the last two presidential elections haven't been all that close at the end; John McCain lost by three percentage points in 2008, and George W. Bush beat John Kerry by five points here in 2004.
So when former South Florida Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler began a discussion on CNN's State of the Union by saying that "one thing that you can bank on is that Florida will be close on election night," Florida Republican Al Cardenas just had to interrupt.
"Maybe. Maybe. I think it all depends on these next two debates. It's fair to say that Governor Romney's got a three-point lead in some polls, Mason-Dixon had him with a seven-point lead. I think it's in the three to four-point rate. But this election maybe could not be close."
Cardenas' (irrational?) exuberance is predicated on that Mason-Dixon poll released on Friday that shows the Republican nominee up by seven points over President Obama. Two other polls (Rasmussen and ARG) show Romney up by four and three points, respectively, over President Obama in the Sunshine State.
Florida GOP political consultant Rick Wilson says Romney's momentum transcends Florida, as he blogged on Friday that Team Obama and their supporters were in free fall.
You can see their gyros tumbling as they slew from Big Bird to abortion to “Mitt Romney is a lying liar liarpants McLiar” to the walking disaster that is Stephanie Cutter every time she opens her mouth to the remarkable, bizarre interview the Three Divas (Axelrod, Plouffe and Messina, obviously) gave Mark Halperin this week. Their campaign is out of control, and they know it.
This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2012.