Gingrich, Romney begin key Florida battle

The four remaining Republican presidential candidates set their sights yesterday on Florida as they prepared for their first televised debate since Newt Gingrich's stunning weekend win in South Carolina.
Gingrich's resounding victory Saturday turned the race on its head, and his political resurrection ensures a dramatic 2012 battle to be the Republican standard-bearer against President Barack Obama on November 6.
It shattered the aura of invincibility surrounding ex-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and turned Florida's January 31 primary into a pivotal contest that could either confirm Gingrich's momentum or restore Romney as frontrunner.
Palm Beach County Republican Party chairman Sid Dinerstein said Florida was now the "make-or-break state" in the contest. "There is a very good chance therefore that after Florida the race is practically over," he told AFP.
Yesterday night's debate in Tampa, on Florida's west coast, offers Romney a chance for a swift bounce-back.
"It was not a great week for me," a stung Romney conceded to Fox News Sunday after watching his substantial lead in South Carolina evaporate in a matter of days. Gingrich eventually won by 12.5 percentage points.
The campaign rhetoric grew increasingly bitter as the multimillionaire investor Romney and pugnacious former House speaker Gingrich locked horns.
Romney said there was "no question" he would go after his rival's character more strongly than he has, implying he would call out Gingrich on his past ethics charges and his admitted marital affairs.
"Character is a big part of leadership, as is vision, sobriety, steadiness. These are attributes which I think people want to see in their candidate."
Gingrich focused his attention on savaging the Democratic incumbent Obama, whom he portrayed as a dangerously weak radical whose first term has been a "disaster."
"Beating Barack Obama has to be the number one mission of the Republican Party," Gingrich told NBC's "Meet the Press," adding that Republicans needed a candidate "strong enough and tough enough" to take on the president.
He posed himself as the insurgent street-fighter up against the establishment candidate Romney.
Gingrich's win rekindled doubts about whether the relatively moderate Romney can rally the party's conservative core, which views him with suspicion.
Former senator Rick Santorum, who finished a distant third in South Carolina, painted them both as unelectable. Romney versus Gingrich is "a choice between a moderate and an erratic conservative," he told ABC.
After coming under pressure from Gingrich and others, Romney vowed to release his 2010 tax return today, seeking to dispel doubts over what he might be hiding ahead of the all-important Florida vote.
But he insisted he would not shy away from his business record, saying he believed Americans -- with respect for Congress at an all-time low -- would support private-sector success over someone who "spent 40 years in Washington as a congressman and a lobbyist."
Gingrich was propelled into contention by some stellar debate performances, in particular a vicious counter-attack on the media when probed about an allegation by his ex-wife that he had once requested an open marriage.
But Florida is a far larger and more diverse state, with Romney's vaunted campaign riches and well-oiled machine expected to give him the edge.
More than 220,000 voters have already cast early ballots, a state party official told AFP -- which analysts say should favor Romney as many voted prior to South Carolina.
While Romney has a pronounced edge in Florida -- polls have him ahead by an average of 18 percentage points -- funds for Gingrich have soared.
But strategists believe the restive mood among the Republican electorate may favor the former speaker, just as it did in South Carolina.
"It is the angriest Republican electorate that I've seen," said David Johnson, an adviser to former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, who dropped out of the race after the New Hampshire primary.
"There's nothing new about Mitt to a lot of these folks," Johnson added. "They know the Mitt story. The question is, are we going to go ahead and vote for Mitt, or are we still shopping?"
A group of Gingrich's supporters will launch an ad campaign today targeting Romney, The Washington Post reported.
Gingrich's triumph in South Carolina followed a Santorum victory in Iowa and a Romney win in New Hampshire. Veteran congressman Ron Paul is also still in the race.