A recent Quinnipiac poll gave Romney a 14-point lead over Newt Gingrich in Florida, but Public Policy Polling has a new poll showing that lead to be half that, with only a 7-point lead.
Romney pulled no punches in touting his surge in the polls, or in attacking his opponent. “I know the speaker's not real happy — speaker Gingrich. He's not feeling very excited these days [audience boos]. I know, it's sad. He's been flailing around trying to go after me for one thing or the other, and you just watch it and you shake your head. It's been painfully revealing to watch.”
He made a point of emphasizing Gingrich's ties with mortgage company Freddie Mac. “He made $1.6 million in his company, standing up and talking about Freddie Mac — made money from Freddie Mac.”
Romney called Freddie Mac “the very institution that helped stand behind the huge housing crisis. And here in Florida, if you're a part of the housing crisis, you're probably not going to get elected president.”
The jab was met with only modest applause, but once Romney pledged to “get this country right again and defeat Barack Obama,” the crowd went wild. He claimed that Obama is comfortable with trillions of dollars in debt, and has accrued more public debt in three years than all prior presidents combined. Sarah Palin made the same claim last May, which Politifact has rated false.
Romney also claimed that the rate of adding new regulations has tripled under Obama when compared to the Bush administration, although Obama actually wrote 5% fewer, albeit more costly, regulations according to Bloomberg.
Smaller government has been the mantra for GOP presidential hopefuls this election season. But there's one sector that that seems to get the unanimous green light for growth every time: Defense. When Romney recalled that only a few weeks ago President Obama promised to cut military spending by $500 billion, the audience booed the notion. Even with the war in Iraq ended, and some palpable opposition to the war in Afghanistan, Romney proposed 100,000 additional troops along with increased shipbuilding and fighter jet purchases, saying that the military is smaller compared to periods during World War I and World War II. Citing the Arab spring and “other countries considering whether to be Islamist,” stress on the border of Mexico with “narco-terror” and war going on there, and “Pakistan teetering,” Romney called a reduction in spending “unthinkable.” He also took shots at Obama's diplomacy, citing his inability to negotiate more effectively with Cuba.
Another sector ripe for growth in a Romney presidency would be energy, and he criticized the president's “all of the above” approach to energy policy. Although Obama pledged to open 75% more land for gas and oil drilling in his recent State of the Union speech, Romney claimed, “He has made it almost impossible to have access to our extraordinarily abundant gas resources. He's held off deep shore-offshore oil drilling.” So Romney pledged to issue licenses to already approved drilling companies the first day he takes office.
He also promised, if elected, to, “repeal Obamacare,” and, “return health care to the American people where it belongs.”
When it comes to health care, Romney may have found his niche in Florida. He has been under attack in a recent ad that claims he profited $473,000 in a $25 million Medicare fraud case involving Damon Corporation, a company formerly owned by Romney’s Bain Capital. Given that Floridians have elected a governor with similar foibles, perhaps Romney will see a boost in his electability for the primary.
One Romney supporter said she once had worked as an executive, and defended Romney's profits, saying that in business transactions one must “make the best possible investment analysis that you can, but you're always at risk. Without that risk, you don't get the reward. And he's entitled to that reward.”
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said Romney has the executive experience to lead the country, coupled with business experience, and called him a “Washington outsider.” She called the former governor of Massachusetts “pro-military, pro-Israel, and pro-our-constitution,” a description which was met with a round of applause.
Romney supporter Cathy Shackton said that she supports the candidate for his values, calling him a “family man.” She said she thinks he will treat everyone fairly, and said Romney “is very presidential, forbearing, and is just gonna be a good fit for the White House; something that's long overdue.”
Some people just wanted to hear Romney speak his piece, like Tori Hollingsworth. She rejects his views. She doesn't agree that “he can make double the amount as the average American citizen, yet pay a third as the rest of American citizens do.”
She said she won't be voting Romney or Gingrich, but supports Congressman Ron Paul, because “he's just the most qualified candidate right now, he's really the lesser of all evils we have going....the fact that he supports states' rights and a smaller federal government, you know shrinking the corruption of our government.”
She said she supports the Occupy movement, of whom at least a dozen were in attendance. Once Romney had finished speaking, some members of Occupy Tampa attempted to mic check him as he waded through the crowd on his way back to his bus. They held signs that read, “Dear Mr. 1%, Go fire yourself! Love, the people. (NOT corporations.)” Seth Collins was holding the cloth sign, which a Romney supporter tried to pull out of his hands. Other Romney supporters tried to block photographers from getting a shot of it with their campaign signs, and shouted “Let's go Mitt!” to drown out Occupy Tampa's chanting.
Collins called himself an anarchist, but said he would vote for Ron Paul because “he would stop the wars, get rid of a lot of the laws that are really illegitimate.”
And while Newt Gingrich has lamented that his dragging poll numbers are due to Romney's innumerable negative campaign ads, some people aren't impressed with them. The Occupy movement has focused a large portion of its energy on banking scandals and economic inequality, but campaign finance has also been at the heart of the struggle. Occupy Tampa protester Bailey Riley said that the group showed up in part to draw attention to Romney's SuperPAC, which she said has spent $17 million to merely “disrupt or destroy other candidates.” She said, “SuperPACs in general contribute unlimited amounts of money through anonymous means. ...I mean you can ask Trevor Potter or Stephen Colbert, for instance, who is kind of showing the idiocy of the system as a whole — of the campaign finance system as a whole. I have no problem at all with donors to campaigns, it's not a big deal, but when you have Super PACs — when you have corporations running your campaign, essentially, that's unfair. And then you have people like Buddy Roemer who is one of the most moderate and credible Republicans that there is, who get no press, no media, no attention, no anything, because they have no money. Nobody listens if you have no money.”
Buddy Roemer has not been invited to any debates, but has made campaign finance reform central to his platform by limiting campaign contributions to $100. Overall, candidates are spending less this election season than 2008, but SuperPACs and outside groups have quadrupled their spending, effectively taking up the slack. And since pro-Romney SuperPAC “Restore Our Future” has released 60 times as many television ads in Florida as Newt Gingrich, according to a study released Monday by Wesleyan, Gingrich is feeling the full effect of unlimited corporate spending to finance elections.
After winning the South Carolina primary, Gingrich is certain that the ads are the only thing propelling Romney into the limelight in Florida right now. And the SuperPACs have made no small impact on Romney's campaign strategy, allowing his campaign to spend about a third of what it spent this time four years earlier in 2008's election season. Yesterday the candidates had to report their October-December spending to the Federal Elections Commission. And after today, Romney and Gingrich will find if all really paid off, at least as far as Florida goes.