Romney-Gingrich battle heating up

When the Titanic steamed serenely into its iceberg 100 years ago, those on board could at first not believe that the great ship would go down. Mitt Romney is at least not making that mistake. After his astonishing defeat in South Carolina's primary on January 21, the man who looked invulnerable just a week before has ordered his campaign into panic mode.

Romney and Restore Our Future, the deep-pocketed superPAC that backs him, spent this week firing broadside upon broadside at Newt Gingrich, the pugnacious former house speaker whose own campaign was recently under water. But time is short. The polls, though now slightly in Romney's favour, still suggest that Gingrich has a chance of beating him again when Florida, the first big state to vote, holds its primary tomorrow.

This has been one of the most volatile months in American politics. January began with a narrow victory for Romney in Iowa's caucuses, followed by a smashing one in New Hampshire. But then came calamity for the front-runner. First a recount stripped him of his Iowa crown, awarding it to Rick Santorum. Then came Gingrich's resurrection in South Carolina. Some 40 per cent of the state's Republican voters went for the former speaker, whereas only 28 per cent preferred Romney. How did Gingrich, with less money and a smaller organisation, turn the tide so quickly? He may have been helped on the margins by the departure of Rick Perry, who threw his diminishing support to Gingrich as he left. From distant Alaska came another endorsement. "If I had to vote in South Carolina, in order to keep this thing going I'd vote for Newt," said Sarah Palin, the pin-up maverick of the tea-party movement.

More potent may have been Gingrich's depiction of Romney as a plutocrat who made his riches by shredding humble livelihoods at the firms taken over by Bain Capital. Romney refused to apologise for being successful and retorted that Bain created far more jobs than it destroyed. But he also made, as he admitted later, the mistake of refusing to release his tax returns before South Carolina voted.

Yet the principal reason for Gingrich's victory appears to have been his vituperative attacks on ‘the elites' and their lackeys in the media in the two televised debates that preceded polling day. In the first he was asked by a black journalist whether he understood why knocking food stamps seemed to belittle racial minorities. Gingrich thundered back that "only the elites despise earning money", and that he would continue "to help poor people learn how to get a job… and learn some day to own that job". This moment earned a standing ovation from the audience of Tea Partiers and was aired repeatedly on news programmes. Three days later, he stirred up another round of thunderous cheers when, in a second debate, he excoriated the "destructive, vicious" news media for dwelling on the remarks of his ex-wife just before a presidential primary.

Honing their appeal

Can two moments of televised drama upend the whole primary process? Perhaps: many voters in the Palmetto State told reporters that Gingrich looked best equipped to win debates with President Barack Obama. Gingrich denies ever having been a lobbyist, and published one of his contracts with Freddie Mac to prove it. Meanwhile Romney at last released his tax returns for 2010 and 2011, while still declining to release more. Those he did publish confirmed that he paid an effective federal rate of only 15 per cent or so on the $42.5 million (Dh156 million) he earned in the past two years, because most of his income is in capital gains. It did not look good. Especially it looked bad in Florida, which, like South Carolina, has had a hard time of it in the recession.

As usual, though, it is the I-4 corridor, which runs from Tampa to Daytona Beach via Orlando, which will decide the election. It accounts for almost half the registered Republicans in the state. Romney and Gingrich are both trying to hone their appeal there. Romney is softening his previously harsh rhetoric about illegal immigration, in deference to Florida's large immigrant community. Gingrich is planning a speech on the failings of Obama's space policy, a blatant pander to the residents of the ‘Space Coast' south of Daytona.

Even if Gingrich maintains his momentum and wins Florida, however, the next few contests are likely to bring Romney some respite. In his last presidential race he won five of the six states that will vote in February. The month's relatively light schedule will also give all the candidates a chance to regroup and raise money in anticipation of their next big showdown: Super Tuesday, on March 6, when 10 states vote. The nomination, which had seemed all but decided, now seems unlikely to be squared away before then.

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