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A drawn-out negative race could imperil Republicans

News Analysis

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

February 01, 2012|By Christopher Rowland

Mitt Romney was on stage at his victory rally after winning the Florida primary. (David L. Ryan/Globe Staff )

TAMPA - Mitt Romney presented a potent case in Florida yesterday that he is the strongest Republican candidate to challenge President Obama by clobbering Newt Gingrich in a third swing state.

First came Iowa, where Romney almost won and Gingrich placed a distant fourth. Then Romney trounced the field in New Hampshire. Gingrich did not break 10 percent in the Granite State. Now Florida.

All three states are more consequential in the general election than redder-than-red South Carolina, the scene of Gingrich’s only victory, because they represent the real prize: the political center.

Obama captured each of them in 2008. Romney’s appeal to mainstream Republicans, moderates, and independents makes him far more likely than Gingrich to compete strongly for these and other battleground states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, in 2012.

But unless Gingrich suddenly capitulates, Romney will continue to wrestle for weeks if not months with the ideological and emotional forces tearing at the Republican Party.

The staunch conservatives who have powered Gingrich’s candidacy demand a vehicle for their anger over federal power and spending. Take voters like Tony Incardoni, who stood alone in his air-conditioning technician uniform in the back of a Tampa aircraft hangar for a Gingrich rally this week.

“Newtron bomb! Newtron bomb!’’ he bellowed in full-throated approval. “Yeah!’’

Romney, in contrast, has taken to reciting the many verses of “America the Beautiful.’’ It intertwines nostalgia with patriotism in a pitch to conservatives, but also seems rather quaint in the face of the incendiary talk emanating from Gingrich and his allies.

“Stupid people are ruining America, and we’ve got to stop that,’’ declared Gingrich ally Herman Cain, drawing wild cheers from supporters at the Tampa rally.

Perceived as the Romney alternative, Gingrich has strong motivation to stay in the race as it enters the February caucus states and heads toward Super Tuesday. Yet, prolonging the primary process all spring, as Gingrich threatens to do, risks marginalizing the issues while magnifying the negative ads and personal attacks.

Such a campaign alienates the critical voice in the general election - independents - and allows Obama to skate unchecked.

Gingrich’s attacks also reinforce the very points that Obama will hammer against Romney: ties to Goldman Sachs and Wall Street, vast wealth, favorable tax rates.