Just two years after Florida Republicans elected a corporatist tea-party candidate Rick Scott as governor, with a narrow, 48.9 percent to 47.7 percent win over his Democratic rival Alex Sink, these same voters tacked decisively to the left in their presidential primary election yesterday, giving Mitt Romney, the former liberal Republican governor of Massachusetts, a decisive 14-point win over tea party-aligned, disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Granted, pickings were slim for Florida’s “true” conservatives. In a field of four, two of the candidates — Romney and Gingrich — have big government records. In the past, Romney has supported women’s reproductive rights and gay rights and imposed restrictions on guns. He also implemented the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s individual mandate as a big-government solution to health-insurance reform when he was governor of Massachusetts. Gingrich, who took millions in lobbying fees from federal housing agencies after he was forced out of Congress, has supported climate science in the past and advocated for NASA, the government-run space agency, while campaigning in Florida last week.
All four candidates — including the purportedly libertarian Texas Rep. Ron Paul — advocate criminalizing abortion, as do nearly all conservatives, despite the fact that it would require a vast new government-run law-enforcement bureaucracy to monitor the medical records of the 4 million women in the United States who become pregnant each year in order to ensure all those pregnancies are brought to term. The fourth candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, is known among regular voters as an anti-gay activist.
Among the four, Romney won in a rout, with 46.4 percent to Gingrich’s 31.9 percent. Santorum received 13.4 percent and Paul received 7.0 percent.
Exit polls found that 66 percent of Florida Republicans self-described as tea party supporters. Of those 41 percent voted for the erstwhile liberal Romney and 38 percent voted for Gingrich, who is the only House speaker ever convicted of ethics violations and who was forced to resign in 1997 while he was leading the impeachment of Pres. Clinton, at least in part because his colleagues learned Gingrich was engaged in a long-term extramarital affair.
A Washington Post-ABC News nationwide poll released last month found that the favorability ratings of both GOP presidential frontrunners are under water. Romney’s favorability/unfavorability is 31/49 and Gingrich’s is 29/51. Among independent voters, who will decide the election if it is close, Romney’s unfavorability rating is 51 percent; Gingrich’s is 53 percent.
The New York Times reports that a key factor in Romney’s victory in Florida was donations $100,000 or more to Romney’s super PAC by about 60 corporations and wealthy individuals. The super Pac spent millions on negative advertising in Florida that focused on Gingrich’s personal baggage and big-government record.
In December, Florida’s Rick Scott was ranked as the least popular governor by Public Policy Polling. PPP found that Scott’s approval rating among Florida voters was 26 percent, while 58 percent disapproved. In January, a Quinnipiac poll found that Scott’s approval/disapproval was still upside down, but had improved to 38-50.
