The far right's candidates have left the Republican race and Newt Gingrich wants to fill that gap, writes TRIP GABRIELin Sarasota, Florida
AS HE MOVED to consolidate the conservative base behind him, Newt Gingrich on Tuesday waved the red cape of a former Florida governor who quit the Republican Party and lost to Tea Party favourite Marco Rubio – a line that got a big reaction from crowds who have not forgotten that act of moderate apostasy.
At event after event on Florida’s southwest coast, Gingrich boasted his state campaign manager had run Rubio’s 2010 Senate race, whereas Mitt Romney had hired “the people who ran Charlie Crist’s campaign”.
The line drew boos at the mention of Crist, who in his pre-Tea Party days was one of the most popular Republican governors in the country.
Gingrich would like nothing better than to draw on the activism and passion of the Tea Party movement. Exit polls showed voters who said they supported the Tea Party backed Romney when he won in New Hampshire, then in South Carolina Gingrich won a 20-point advantage among Tea Party supporters en route to his commanding victory on Saturday.
That momentum may roll on for him in Florida, a state less conservative than South Carolina, but where the Tea Party claimed an important role in the 2010 victories of Rubio and Rick Scott, the governor.
Tea Party leaders said they have been aggressively courted by all of the campaigns. With the withdrawal of other candidates who once energised the movement – Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Rick Perry – their votes have been in play.
“When Cain dropped out, up until 2½ weeks ago there was a vacuum,” said Everett Wilkinson, chairman of the Florida Tea Party, the largest in the state, who said Cain was once the favourite of 80 to 90 per cent of the 100,000 people on his email list.
“I think it’s being filled right now very quickly by Gingrich.”
Another Tea Party leader, Billie Tucker of the First Coast Tea Party, said she was seeing a similar surge, although Rick Santorum and Ron Paul also had supporters. Romney, she said, “has not really been involved in the Tea Party movement like the others.
“The reason people really like Newt right now is because the things we’ve all been thinking, he’s saying it,” she said.
After Gingrich’s aggressive debate outings last week in South Carolina, when he directed fire at “elites” in Washington and the media, people are concluding “he’s got courage,” she said. “We don’t want be milquetoast.”
It was an equally important day for the Gingrich campaign behind the scenes.
The “super PAC” supporting him announced it would spend $6 million on ads in Florida, indicating some would continue the attacks on Romney’s career as corporate buyout specialist.
Gingrich drew the largest crowd here since his campaign began last spring, more than 2,500 people, according to a sheriff’s estimate, who were organised by the county Republican Party and several Tea Party and Glenn Beck-inspired 9/12 groups. As he climbed to the podium, he said: “You have to imagine looking out over this crowd what this does to make me feel good.”
One indication that the Tea Party was in the house was that Gingrich received some of his biggest applause for issues of glancing importance to most Republicans but hot buttons for the grass roots – eliminating White House “czars” and moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
The former Crist aides now working for Romney include one of his top strategists, Stuart Stevens, and his chief spokeswoman, Andrea Saul.
After losing in the Republican primary to the out-of-nowhere candidacy of Rubio, Crist challenged him as an independent, gambling that the Tea Party movement was an outlier. However Rubio won decisively and has been mentioned as a vice-presidential possibility.
Stevens and Saul resigned from Crist’s campaign in 2010 when he left the Republican Party. That, however, did not stop Gingrich from attempting to taint Romney with the Crist melodrama.
Romney responded to a reporter’s question about Gingrich’s remarks by alluding to a mass exodus by Gingrich staffers early in the campaign.
“Maybe because he lost his whole staff, he’s consumed with other people’s staff,” Romney said. “I don’t think this is about staff, I think this is about the candidate.”
Both in the size of his crowds and in the tales of individuals there was evidence that Gingrich’s candidacy is continuing its moment.
Al Romanoski (66), a marketing consultant, waited for his arrival outside the Tick Tock restaurant in St Petersburg.
He said he was an independent who threw his support to Gingrich last week while watching him dress down John King of CNN in a debate for asking about a former wife’s charge that he had wanted an open marriage.
“That really brought me to the forefront and caused me to raid my shirt closet and get this piece of cardboard and make this sign,” Romanoski said.
His sign said “Sock it to ’em, Newt.”
– (New York Timesservice)