The Guardian
Newt Gingrich staring at Florida defeat in Republican nomination race
Mitt Romney ahead in polls despite Herman Cain, who dropped out of the contest, backing Gingrich at late stage
By Ewen MacAskill
The Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich appears to be heading for defeat in the Florida primary on Tuesday despite picking up the endorsement of former pizza mogul and Tea Party favourite Herman Cain.
Polls show Mitt Romney with a double-digit lead, though these were taken before Cain's surprise announcement of support for Gingrich on Saturday night. Pollsters predicted the intervention of Cain, who was the frontrunner in the race late last year until he was forced out by sexual harassment allegations, is unlikely to make much difference.
Gingrich, who arrived in Florida with momentum behind him from victory in the South Carolina primary, has been subjected to a battering by the Romney camp, which has hit him with a $14m (£8.9m) advertising blitz backed up by sustained criticism from a series of Republican luminaries. Republican strategists said they had seen nothing on this scale since the 1960s.
Media analysts put the ratio of Romney ads to Gingrich at 4-1 but the ratio is even higher for big, expensive events. During a widely watched basketball game in Florida at the weekend, Romney's camp aired seven ads compared to none by Gingrich.
Gingrich, interviewed on CBS on Sunday, accused Romney of dishonesty. "Lincoln once said if a man won't agree that two plus two equals four, then you'll never win the argument because facts don't matter. Romney's the first candidate I've seen who fits the Lincoln description."
Gingrich spent the weekend going from church to church across central Florida appealing for rightwingers to unite behind him rather than waste their votes on Rick Santorum, who is lying in third place in the polls. Santorum, who had only been campaigning half-heartedly in the state, left Florida on Friday to return home to Pennsylvania for the weekend. He cancelled plans to return to Florida after his three-year-old daughter was taken to hospital.
A Miami Herald poll on Sunday put Romney on 42%, Gingrich 31%, Santorum 14% and Texas Congressman Ron Paul on 6%. Other polls mirrored the findings.
Brad Coker, the head of Mason-Dixon polling which carried out the Miami Herald poll, when asked if Gingrich could mount a comeback in the state, said: "Not in Florida. Romney is pretty much in control." He saw Romney as having the advantage in the upcoming caucuses and primaries but anticipated the war of attrition between the two continuing through to at least Super Tuesday on 6 March, when 10 states vote.
He did not regard Cain's endorsement as significant. "Cain is pretty much useless here. Cain is not flavour of the month and reminds people of Gingrich's womanising," Coker said.
Cain, endorsing Gingrich at a campaign event on Saturday night, described the candidate as a patriot not afraid of bold ideas. He referred to the bombardment Gingrich is under. "Going through this sausage grinder, I know what this sausage grinder is all about. I know that he's going through this sausage grinder because he cares about the future of the United States of America," Cain said.
Gingrich's lack of organisation on the ground is being exposed by the sheer vastness of Florida. More than 200,000 people have already taken advantage of early voting, which closed on Sunday, and Romney's campaign team has been working hard in getting his supporters to take advantage of this. Surveys of early voting show Romney winning by roughly about 50% to Gingrich's 30%. Romney also seems to have won over one of few groups in Florida that is relatively disciplined in its voting, the Cuban-Americans.
The Romney camp released a new ad on Sunday, naming 196 House Republicans that voted to reprimand Gingrich for an ethics violation when he was Speaker. Romney's campaign team paid for this but others have been paid for by super-political action committees (PACs) which can spend without restraint following a supreme court ruling on campaign finance.
Gingrich supporters expressed outrage over the scale of the negative ads. At a church meeting after hearing Gingrich, Jeff Newmark, an account manager in Orlando who took advantage of early voting to cast his ballot for him, said people were sick of the negative ads, which he described as unfair. "Romney could tell his PACs to stop this. What they are doing is giving too much ammunition to the Democratic party and hurting themselves," Newmark said.
Paul, who opted against campaigning in Florida, has concentrated instead on Maine. He predicted on CNN that he stood a good chance of winning it. Like Coker, he did not see Cain's endorsement of Gingrich as having much impact on the race because the Tea Party "is all over the place" on who to back.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/technology/blackberry-under-siege-in-europe-from-rivals.html?_r=1&ref=global-home&gwh=345423132DA94A2DB93FC8CE081FB721
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