Romney won’t let up on Gingrich

Associated Press

MIAMI

Cheered by new polls, Mitt Romney is all but predicting victory in Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary. Newt Gingrich is looking past Florida to regroup, vowing he won’t stay buried long.

“With a turnout like this, I’m beginning to feel we might win tomorrow,” an upbeat Romney told a crowd of several hundred at a stop in Dunedin on Monday as he and Gingrich zipped across the state making their final appeals.

Gingrich, in turn, acknowledged that his momentum had been checked but promised not to back down. He characterized Romney as an imposter, and his team started to plot a strategy for upcoming contests.

“He can bury me for a very short amount of time with four or five or six times as much money,” Gingrich said in a television interview. “In the long run, the Republican Party is not going to nominate ... a liberal Republican.”

GOP officials in Florida were anticipating a big turnout, more than 2 million voters, up from a record 1.9 million in the Republican primary in 2008. More than 605,000 Floridians already had voted as of Monday, either by visiting early-voting stations or by mailing in absentee ballots, ahead of the total combined early vote in the GOP primary four years ago.

In the span of a volatile week, the tables have turned in this potentially pivotal primary state.

Gingrich rode a triumphant wave into Florida after a South Carolina victory nine days ago. But since then, Romney and his allies have pummeled the former House speaker on TV and on the campaign trail. Romney turned in two strong debate performances, while Gingrich faltered. Now opinion polls show the former Massachusetts governor with a comfortable lead here.

Romney and Gingrich have been the only two candidates to compete in Florida in earnest. Neither former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum nor Texas Rep. Ron Paul campaigned much in the state, and they were elsewhere Monday.

Clearly in command, Romney flew to stops in media markets in northern Florida and the populous swing regions of central Florida, determined to keep Gingrich from surging late.

Romney renewed attacks on his rival as an untrustworthy, Washington influence peddler at the outset of two separate appearances Monday. He claimed that Gingrich’s ties to federally backed mortgage giant Freddie Mac have hurt the former speaker in a state wracked by the foreclosure crisis.

“He made $1.6 million in his company, the very institution that helped stand behind the huge housing crisis here in Florida,” Romney said in Dunedin. Gingrich’s consulting firm received more than $1.5 million from the federally backed mortgage giant over a period after he left Congress in 1999.

Gingrich plowed ahead, flying to stops in northern Florida starting in Jacksonville — near his home state of Georgia — before touching down in conservative Pensacola and then Tampa.