If you want to know why Mitt Romney’s landslide win last night in Florida really does mean the GOP nomination battle is all but over, consider this:
Florida is the most important swing state in the country. Romney will need Republican enthusiasm here if he is to prevail in November. And last night gave us serious evidence that he has earned a good deal of it already.
That is, he gave a powerful indication he can unite his party in a key state.
It’s not just that Romney came close to 50 percent of the vote in a four-man race against three proven vote-getters. Nor is it that he managed to outdistance Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum combined. It’s also that 76 percent of Florida Republicans in the exit poll yesterday said they approve of Romney.
That means 30 percent of those who didn’t vote for Romney still managed to maintain a favorable view of him.
This is very significant, because it suggests Romney wears well over time.
The big question about Romney has been whether he generates more negative response than positive response. Florida would seem to have answered that question in his favor.
And that comes not in spite of his very negative campaign, but in part because of it. As I said yesterday, it seems that all Republican voters who didn’t drink the Gingrich Kool-Aid appreciated learning that Romney is willing to show real toughness, even meanness, in pursuit of the golden ticket.
More important was the fact that Romney proved himself able and willing to take the fight to Gingrich during the two debates last week — thus suggesting to Republicans that he has the mettle to do the same with President Obama in the fall.
Those performances were of immense help to him. For those who said the debates were a factor in their decision, Romney beat Gingrich, 43-33.
“A competitive primary does not divide us,” Romney said last night. “It prepares us — and we will win.”
Gingrich, in his speech, suggested he would be the tribune of the “people” against “money power,” even somehow managing to slip in a glaringly inappropriate reference to the Gettysburg Address.
But there was no evidence whatever that Gingrich represents the views of the “people,” and considerably greater evidence that Romney does.
Looking at the exit polls, what we see is that Romney won every significant category but one. Every age group. Every religious denomination. Every income group. Every ethnicity.
He won an outright majority of women. He even basically tied Gingrich with evangelical Christians.
He did lose to Gingrich among “very conservative” voters, but even in the Florida GOP closed primary, they made up only a third of the electorate. And the real question for those voters in November will be whether their disappointment with Romney’s mixed ideological history outweighs their hunger to get rid of Barack Obama. It’s a little hard to believe they’ll sit on their hands.
There are “46 states to go,” Gingrich insisted last night. Indeed there are. But he’ll never have a better chance than he did in Florida, coming off a stunning victory in South Carolina and even enjoying a lead in the polls immediately following.
He can blame the money Romney spent, but he really lost his way in the debates, which had mammoth audiences — and where he showed he couldn’t handle a direct attack.
Newt can dream, but the dream is over. Republicans want to win this race, and there’s only one thoroughbred left.