ORMOND BEACH, FL — Mitt Romney upped his rhetoric against both Newt Gingrich and President Obama in his first Florida rally since losing South Carolina, looking to reassure anxious supporters who suffered through the campaign’s toughest week yet.
“We’re not choosing a talk show host, we’re choosing a leader,” Romney said, saying that their nominee should exhibit “integrity,” “sobriety,” and “ethics.”
He called Gingrich a “failed leader” as Speaker who “had to resign in disgrace” and criticized his work as a highly paid consultant for Freddie Mac in his years out of office. “He said he was just a historian there,” Romney said. “I’d like him to release his records there.”
For frustrated Romney fans, the Newt attacks couldn’t come soon enough.
“Tell it it to him in the debates!” one person shouted as Romney began his attack monologue.
“Take the gloves off, Mitt!” another hollered.
Romney drew big applause for his attacks on Obama as well, which mostly stuck to his usual stump speech warning of an “entitlement society” and contained plenty of pointed lines.
“I don’t think he understands the power of free people and free enterprise,” he said. “I think he would change, fundamentally, America.”
“Socialist!” an audience member yelled.
Said Romney: “I think it’s time we had someone in the White House who knows how to create jobs because he’s had a job.”
Mitt certainly read the crowd right. In interviews with TPM, several supporters complained before his speech that Romney had been outflanked recently by Gingrich and needed to turn the tables fast.
“This is a rough week for sure,” Dave Peacock, a 34-year old health care IT analyst who moved to the state from Utah, said. “I’m a little shocked — everything we know about Newt is front page tabloid fodder. People somehow don’t get how damaging his record is. He says ‘how dare you bring up these things,’ but how dare you do these things!”
Peacock said he expected Republicans to rally against Newt fast, but added Romney made his problems worse by not releasing his taxes returns when he was first pressed about them. “People perceived him as having something to hide,” he said.
Charles Hutchinson, 78, an independent planning to vote against Obama in the general, said that Romney’s awkward handling of the tax issue raised electability concerns.
“It puts him in a bad light because he wasn’t prepared,” he said, “And if he’s not prepared in the primary, what happens when he goes up against President Obama?”
Ann Romney raised the tax issue in introducing her husband to the stage, saying that while they would release their returns soon “we know where our riches are — our riches are with our family.”
David Poler, a retired business development executive, and his wife Manuela, a retired flight attendant, had plenty of ideas as to what Mitt was doing wrong. Both were shocked to see him on the ropes over Bain Capital and his tax records in a Republican primary.
“He needs to be less laid back,” Mrs. Poler said. “Lay out succinctly what you did, don’t be on the defensive. This is what people aspire to!”
“Be proud of it,” her husband agreed.
For longtime Romney fan Pam Miller, 57, the former governor’s economic message hits home on a personal level. She and her husband have been in tough straits since the economic crash, struggling to hold onto their home after she lost her job in Maine in mental health crisis intervention (“I went from one crisis to the nation’s crisis,” she says.) She thinks Romney’s demeanor should reflect the passions of supporters like her more.
“I don’t like his vanilla-ness,” she said. “This is the most bland rally I’ve ever been to — if I were his campaign manager I’d tell him to let his hair down, put on his boots and jeans.”
Still, like many supporters, she wasn’t ready to believe Gingrich was anywhere close to grabbing the nomination.
“Newt’s like a see-saw,” she said. “He’ll fall again.”
Benjy Sarlin
Benjy Sarlin is a reporter for Talking Points Memo and co-writes the campaign blog, TPM2012. He previously reported for The Daily Beast/Newsweek as their Washington Correspondent and covered local politics for the New York Sun.
The sorrowful part for people like Miller is that Mittens has nothing to offer and she believes he does.
Mitt: OK, now I'm going to get REALLY tough -- I'm going to slap at you with BOTH hands.
The GOPTEA base does not care how these candidates attack each other. They care how they attack Obama and quite frankly Newt is much better at it. Both attack Obama based on lies but Newt knows how to tell GD lies much better than Mittens.
Mitt has a problem when it comes to flinging mud, because he doesn't do dirty very well. He comes across as the rich preppy frat douche villain in every low budget Animal House knock off party comedy from the 80s.
inmanroshi Egggzactly. I couldn't have phrased it better.
inmanroshi Romney is sooo Greg Marmalard.
Powkat inmanroshi And who else appeared in Animal House? Kevin Bacon..
That didn't even need six degrees.
inmanroshi
MittBot2012 can't help that. It's just programmed that way.
I wish that the GOP electorate would listen to what this man actually says to ordinary Americans when pressed about addressing real issues with real solutions. In SC, he told a 99%ers who asked if he would help the 99% since he was part of the 1%. Instead of saying that he would create jobs or ease their tax or mortgage problems, he attacked the questioner and then went on to say that he (Romney) as an American and the 99% was wrong and trying to divide the country. What came across to me in both his words and his actions was this: I am an American, and you are not! I DO NOT WANT A PRESIDENT WHO THINKS BECAUSE I AM NOT WEALTHY LIKE HE IS OR THAT I WOULD DARE TO QUESTION HIM ABOUT HIS POLICY IDEAS THAT I AM NOT AN AMERICAN OR AT LEAST, HIS KIND OF AMERICAN! Talk about elitist!
We are a divided nation, not just in politics, but in life and wealth. That Romney would seem to think that a legitimate question about policy proposals that will help the average American is somehow wrong or un-American shows just how disconnected this man is from the rest of America. He has lived in privilege all his life and to him (and this is why he seems so cold) the rest of Americans are nothing but inhuman units of labor or consumption. He is arrogant in his attitudes towards the average citizen and if you think this is just campaign demeanor, think again. He will destroy this country just as he has done with companies at Bain Capital.
And, Newt Gingrich is no better. High moral character? In his dreams maybe. And as for his current wife making him a "redeemed" man by turning him to Roman Catholicism - this is the woman who was willing to be the other woman in an "open marriage" arrangement! How the Pope would have loved that one! This man and his wife are political opportunists and hypocrites, and while he may have defeated Romney in SC, I think you will find that as an opponent to President Obama, he will find himself facing all the minefields of his own past and collapsing under the weight.
I wondering if they will be borrowing a scanner from TSA tonight for the Tampa debate.
edjoe3 Ask Rand Paul to borrow his....
So Willard is removing his mittens? Now I'm confused. :)
Poor, misunderstood Mittens. He's just a victim of the soft bigotry of high expectations.
Seapost ... high expectations he himself has been raising through his rhetoric. This is what happens when rhetoric and reality collide.
Seapost If by high you mean running for the nomination for six years and consistently polling at around 30% with Republicans. Of course, he's still ahead of all the others. The Republican party seems to have vanished, leaving behind shards of Wall Streeters, Tea Partiers, Libertarians and unclassified nut jobs.
When Mitt removes his peccary leather gloves he’ll be removing gloves made from the world’s rarest and most luxurious gloving leather, originating from wild hogs in South America. Each glove with be worth what most people make in a year.
Jason Scott But Newt doesn't need to worry about putting on pigskin.
nominee should exhibit “integrity,” “sobriety,” and “ethics.” - Mittens has sobriety as far as we know. He can work on the other 2 where he is just as bad as Newt
“I don’t think he understands the power of free people and free enterprise,” he said. “I think he would change, fundamentally, America.”
“Socialist!” an audience member yelled.
Said Romney: “I think it’s time we had someone in the White House who knows how to create jobs because he’s had a job.”
Beyond the simple fact that the failure of the US educational system is apparent in the additional simple fact that most people don't understand the concept of "socialism," that some people don't recognize the additional fact that the current administration resurrected the largest manufacturing business (a capitalist enterprise) in the US with its participation in the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies on behalf of taxpayers, saving not a few jobs along the way, and Romney's fealty to his fiduciary duties to investors, which in many instances caused the loss of jobs, Romney is just contradictory.
"Government doesn't create jobs. Obama has failed to create jobs." Somehow, these two tenets of the Republican mantra, personified by Romney, appear to be contradictory. But, maybe it's just me.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. But Obama should run on his record.
dwqwerty09 Just look at this video. Starting around 40 seconds. Mitt just isn't able to step outside his "Wham Bam, buy 'em, borrow on 'em, strip 'em kick 'em to the curb, Thank you Ma'am" mentality
. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F70dnHfWcTk
He has the same charming attitude to foreclosures.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksqgdgd-JH8
Mitt Romney - A man for all Seizures.
The republicans' unfocused rage and resentment of Obama's success is causing them to flail about wildly, attacking each other, second-guessing themselves and generally act out like lunatics.They thought 2010 was their ticket to easy victory. So they pulled hard to the right, thinking they could find a strong bully-candidate who would sweep into the race, give a humiliating defeat to Obama (for revenge) and then deliver a death blow to liberalism ONCE AND FOR ALL.
Poor white trash conservatives. They forgot that the most educated, most wealthy and most powerful people find right wing fascism highly unappealing. Not to mention that the huge population centers, America's cities, are decidedly liberal. If it weren't for constitutional devices that give the minority population rural states are districts equal footing, conservatism would be but a distant, awful memory.
Just reading about the sludge that was at the rally makes my skin crawl. Conservatives aren't my fellow citizens, they are the enemy.
This country will NEVER be united again. The hatred is too intense and deep.
ORIGINAL_DINO I hope that all the insanity is really just the racists seeing their 'culture' dying and in death throes. The next generation will be much more 20th century. When we can hopefully, finally, have that morning in America.
Wow, that woman whose a Romney supporter mentioned in the article is stupid. She says his economic ideas would help her? OMG, she needs to read and do some investigating and SEE her boy Mittens is ONLY for the richest 1%. NOT her. Oh well, some of these dumb folks slay me. Voting in their own worst interest. HOPE she enjoys living UNDER a bridge when Mittens won't allow her to re-finance the mortgage on her home. What a M0r0n she is.
beautiful_forever_1961
"Voting in their own worst interest" describes the entire Republican base.
beautiful_forever_1961 These people don't vote for that reason. If people voted based on what you are saying (and i agree BTW) the Democrats would kick azz in every election. These people vote off racial bias (DeM's are for minorities), religion (Dems for abortion), guns (Dem's wanna take their guns away), social policies (Dems love gay people) etc.... etc.... Economic best interest which should be #1 concern is waay down the line. How Mitt in early poll (with all the retiree's in Florida) is beating Obama in Florida perplexes me. Mitt will cut those people's benefits if elected.
tjirish34beautiful_forever_1961 It's a mistake to distinguish conservative attacks on Democrats and conservative voters' estimation of their economic interests. In the conservative vision, the top 1% could be as wealthy as they wish and there would be still plenty for the rest ... if the rest were only white, straight, Christian men and their families.
In that vision, the only structural weakness in our economy is that Big Government (via Democrats) forces the economy to include Others - persons of color, women, LGBTs, etc. - and there's just not enough to go around.
The demographics of wealth and income distribution prove that vision false, but that vision is not about evidence. It's about an emotionally attractive (to conservatives), logically coherent story of cause-and-effect ... and humans tend to believe emotionally attractive, logically coherent stories of cause-and-effect ... regardless of evidence.
tjirish34beautiful_forever_1961 Agreed, with one proviso. I think that these voters are so misinformed that they really think they are voting in their own economic interests. I mean, otherwise that Black guy in the White House is going to take all their money and give it to single moms and gang members. He's a socialist, don't forget.
beautiful_forever_1961 on that note, I don't understand how anyone can believe the hyperbolic "socialist" and "entitlement" monologue these candidates refer to. compared to what? the last 30 years have seen social programs suffer. the government has gotten bigger -- not in per capita social spending -- but in fighting defense spending in resource or ideological wars. the absence of critical thinking of the electorate sometimes is so effing frustrating
adam.x.hillbeautiful_forever_1961 Plus, a lot of the people who are most irate at "socialism" are the very ones receiving government money for themselves.
Gordon Gekko Romney is an empty suit with wax hair, zero charisma and no integrity. He has no core convictions, he's just a rich guy who's done nothing but spend the last eight years running for president. It's on his bucket list.
Only the mainstream media could make vulture capitalist Mitt look good enough to be a frontrunner
Romney needs to be everything he's not.
Mitt Romney sees a tree and envisions its future as a part of a large housing development and the investment potential to be gained from such purchases wherefore and wherein,
Newt Gingrich sees a tree and ponders its significance as a remnant of the Austria-Hungarian Empire and its relationship to the Bermuda Triangle and the Battle of Kursk.
Ron Paul sees a tree and sees a wall separating church and state that should be pulled down by the states as they see fit. And besides, it looks too much like a woman's right to choose.
Rick Santorum sees a tree and can't stop thinking about German Shepherds.
Imma call it a night on that one. Later y'all.
Doremus Jessup 2.0 G'night Doremus! :)
Mickey Bitsko If a Republican falls in the woods, do the happy trees make any noise?
Cyberduckie G'night all.
“The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -- Samuel Clemens
Mickey Bitsko G'night Mickey. G'night all.
Nothing wingers like more than a nasty, lying jackass.
<i>Said Romney: “I think it’s time we had someone in the White House who knows how to create jobs because he’s had a job.”</i>
Because being a law professor (nevermind being a community organizer) isn't a job.
Mitt Romney, the ultimate Entitlement Candidate...
jcf1899 Doesn't he realize that he just described himself? Being the Chairman of the Board or of the Olympics is not a job. It's ceremonial. They meet like maybe four times a year at the most.
Romney is as dumb as Perry who suggested the US Congress only meet every other year like the legislature does in TX. I can see it now. The British will attack again and burning down the Capitol with none of the Republicans noticing. The volunteer firemen will take care of it?
jcf1899 Obama was a Senator. Romney was a Governor. Of course, those are both public jobs so they don't count.
Nate Silver is giving Gingrich a 66% chance of winning Florida.
Doremus Jessup 2.0 Do you know if that includes early voting ballots already cast?
Cyberduckie Just based on polls.
CyberduckieDoremus Jessup 2.0 Good point. Republicans love to vote early absentee.
Romney has been organizing forever in FL. while Newt is depending mostly on publicity as he didn't even have a ground game a month ago in any state.. Gingrich better concentrate on that I-4 corridor if he wants to catch up with Romney downstate and on the coasts.
I don't know how organized the Tea Party is in the Panhandle but I bet they haven't the GOTV capabilities that the Republican Establishment has.
If this is close and I think it will be, Newt loses his momentum and then everyone loses interest in Newt.
Doremus Jessup 2.0 With the way voters in SC turned on the frontrunner in just 36 hours, I'd say he better wait till closer to the actual election date before making any projections in FL.
Doremus Jessup 2.0
Wow if that happens, Katie bar the door!!!
And OH HAPPY DAY!
It's ironic that these Romney supporters have picked their candidate and all of them have ideas about what he's doing wrong.
STARTS?!!! STARTS?!!! STARTS?!!! His gloves have been off ever since 2008 when he chased Fred Thompson out of that race. Until recently, he has been craftier in his covert hits.
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