ROMNEY LEADS AFTER BIG FLORIDA VICTORY
TAMPA, Florida: Mitt Romney marched ahead on Wednesday with a commanding lead in the US Republican race for the White House after trouncing his main rival Newt Gingrich in a bitterly-fought Florida primary.
The margin of victory—46 percent to 32 percent—dealt a bitter blow to the former House Speaker, who faces a Herculean task to try to catch up with Romney, a multimillionaire businessman and former governor of Massachusetts.
The 68-year-old Gingrich shocked the party establishment when he thumped the 64-year-old Romney in South Carolina earlier this month, but his support sank fast in the larger and more diverse state of Florida, and the ex-governor now has all the momentum.
Romney’s double-digit win in the Sunshine State demonstrated his strength in a key general election battleground, and he used his victory speech to urge Americans to evict President Barack Obama from the White House in November.
“Mr. President, you were elected to lead. You chose to follow, and now it is time for you to get out of the way,” he said, to chants of “Mitt! Mitt! Mitt!” from hundreds of supporters in a packed Tampa ballroom.
“President Obama wants to fundamentally transform America and make it something perhaps we wouldn’t recognize. I want to restore to America the values and principles that made us the hope of the Earth,” Romney added.
It was a warning shot at Democrats who have been salivating over the increasingly caustic tone of the Republican campaign, which was marked in Florida by a heavy exchange of increasingly personal attacks between Romney and Gingrich.
“A competitive primary does not divide us, it prepares us and we will win,” Romney said. “When we gather back here in Tampa seven months from now for our convention, ours will be a united party with a winning ticket for America.”
‘Great Recession’
Florida has been badly hit by the “Great Recession” wrought by the 2008 financial crisis—unemployment is close to 10 percent and the state was at the epicenter of the housing collapse.
Many residents have seen their homes repossessed or have mortgages now worth more than the value of their homes.
Despite the stinging defeat, Gingrich promised to wage a long-haul battle all the way to the August 27–30 convention, which will formally crown a nominee to go head-to-head against Obama on November 6.
“It is now clear that this will be a two-person race between the conservative leader, Newt Gingrich, and the Massachusetts moderate,” he told supporters in Orlando, referring to Romney.
Gingrich is desperate for Rick Santorum, who was running third on Tuesday with 13 percent, to quit, as he believes that the former senator’s conservative support would swing behind him and allow him to usurp Romney.
But Santorum, already in Nevada after giving up on Florida to focus his meager resources elsewhere, showed no sign of conceding and instead sent out a defiant message to the Gingrich camp.
“We need someone who can be a conservative nominee,” he said in Las Vegas.
“In Florida, Newt Gingrich had his opportunity. He came out of the state of South Carolina, he came out with a big win and a lot of money,” the ex-senator added.
“He said: ‘I’m going to be the conservative alternative. I’m going to be the anti-mitt.’ It didn’t work. He became the issue. We can’t allow our nominee to be the issue in the campaign,” Santorum said.
After the South Carolina setback, Romney used his muchdeeper campaign war chest to un- leash an unrelenting barrage of negative ads in Florida.
Hitting Gingrich on ethics, Romney also frequently mentioned the former Speaker’s work as a highly paid consultant for mortgage giant Freddie Mac, which is seen by some as complicit in the housing meltdown of 2008.
With seven states voting in the next four weeks, Romney’s deep pockets and political organization could play a key role as the candidates battle on multiple fronts.