The 2012 Florida Primary

[SentinelMind]

I'm looking at this as someone who wants a weakened candidate in the general. Romney will win, but for the last month all Floridians, swing voters, saw was Romeny and Gingrich saying, "No, you're the *******!" Sure, Romney won convincing them Gingrich is the more unlikable person, but he comes off weaker in that state than he did one month ago. And the longer it goes, the weaker Gingrich will make him. Gingrich is petty and mean. He's angry that Mitt Romney can outspend him 4-to-1 with character assassination ads. He's going to stay in as long as he possibly can to return the favor.

Meanwhile, Obama, in comparison, looks more presidential with each passing week.

If Romney is the candidate...the only factor that determine the race will be the state of the economy. Romney's not losing any McCain state...so he can only go up...especially in close states like Ohio and Florida.

Gingrich...I can see likeability, lack of discipline, trustworthiness being a strong factor playing in people's mind. Gingrich has a strong character problem. Romney is a salesman..but that's stuck on his professional life, he has a pretty clean personal life. Gingrich just oozes sleaze from his heart to the surface.

 

[DACrowe]

But you're looking at this through an incredibly biased viewpoint. Your desire for a weakened Romney just isn't reflecting the reality of tonight. Romney was extremely weakened by South Carolina, but he made a huge comeback tonight.

He'll certainly stay in as long as he can, but he's failing to weaken Romney. The only person that Gingrich is weakening with his showing in Florida is Gingrich because he comes off as a bitter crybaby. His attack ads were pathetic. Desperate negativity doesn't work.

CNN is reporting that the Obama camp really isn't happy with the Florida results. Romney had a very strong showing among Florida's Latinos (where they increased their voting share from 10% to 14% and Romney won 54% of them despite Gingrich's attacks). With Romney's great showing in Florida and Obama's poor approval ratings in the state, the Obama camp considers Obama to be the underdog in Florida.

He only looks Presidential because he's not bogged down with primary politics. McCain looked more Presidential in 2008 when Obama and Hillary were dragging it out.

Quite a bit of what you're saying makes sense, but I'd argue your (reluctant) support of Romney is giving you a bit of bias. Gingrich is coming off bad and Romney cleaned Gingrich's clock in Florida, but Romney's ads were about destroying Gingrich's character....not really putting himself up.

I agree Obama has a tough road in Florida, but all Romney did in this primary was say, "This Gingrich guy is a real jerk." He won by putting Newt down. That's the difference between this and 2008. Obama and Hillary seemed to hold back from that last line of bitterness so that they could walk it back. Gingrich and Romney clearly hate each other. I don't think it will be a Carter-Kennedy fiasco, simply because Gingrich doesn't have the money to last until the convention, but if this is a long, bitter contest, political history shows that such bitterness tends to weaken both candidates. And this is very personal right now.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Quite a bit of what you're saying makes sense, but I'd argue your (reluctant) support of Romney is giving you a bit of bias. Gingrich is coming off bad and Romney cleaned Gingrich's clock in Florida, but Romney's ads were about destroying Gingrich's character....not really putting himself up.

I certainly agree with you that Romney's ads were about destroying Gingrich's character and not putting himself up but it's not really bias when you look at the content of the ads. Romney's negative ads worked because they were based on a degree of truth, he used Gingrich's past against him. Gingrich's ads on the other hand tried to paint him as anti-Semetic or xenophobic or being a liberal, which isn't going to work because they came off as desperate and pathetic.

Or let's use the general example for example with the negative ads that the Obama camp will be using. Using Romney's past with Bain Capital and his taxes are going to be an effective negative attack ads. Using David Axelrod's most recent attack bringing up Romney's dog being tied up to the roof of a car.......not so much.

It really all comes down to the content of the negative ads. Romney had the right content while Gingrich used the wrong content (he should have used the content he used in South Carolina, which worked).

I agree Obama has a tough road in Florida, but all Romney did in this primary was say, "This Gingrich guy is a real jerk." He won by putting Newt down. That's the difference between this and 2008. Obama and Hillary seemed to hold back from that last line of bitterness so that they could walk it back. Gingrich and Romney clearly hate each other. I don't think it will be a Carter-Kennedy fiasco, simply because Gingrich doesn't have the money to last until the convention, but if this is a long, bitter contest, political history shows that such bitterness tends to weaken both candidates. And this is very personal right now.

Kennedy didn't weaken Carter, if you look at the degree of Reagan's victory in 1980, Carter was doomed no matter what. Carter could gone unopposed in the primaries and he still would have lost by a ridiculously large margin.

The bitter Democratic primaries of 2008 didn't really weaken Obama. By the time September came, it was blatantly obvious that the Democrats were going to win no matter what. And I think that Hillary made Obama a much stronger candidate. While he still wasn't the best debater, debating Hillary at least allowed Obama to develop the skills needed so that he wouldn't look like a complete and total fool against McCain. It taught him how to unite the Democratic Party. And he became a better politician because of it.