In Fla., a contest to define the GOP

MOUNT DORA, Fla. - Republican Newt Gingrich's acid tone could have burned a hole in steel as he ripped the elites in New York and Washington for oppressing the people, and portrayed rival Mitt Romney as a bloodsucking capitalist who has profited from the misery of Floridians who have lost their homes to foreclosure.

Nearly 1,000 tea-party activists arrayed on the lawn of a lakefront inn - a crowd sprinkled with "Don't Tread on Me" flags, patriotic T-shirts and hand-lettered signs - roared their approval the other day as Gingrich took it to the Man - the GOP, that is.

"Remember," Gingrich said. "The Republican establishment is just as much an establishment as the Democratic establishment, and they are just as determined to stop us. Make no bones about it. This is a campaign for the very nature of the Republican Party."

The campaigning ahead of Tuesday's crucial Florida presidential primary has stripped bare the conflict that, in many ways, lies at the heart of the nomination contest: a struggle to define the Republican Party several decades into the conservative revolution. The fight pits a furious and anxious middle class against the wealthy, the tea party against the country club, Gingrich against Romney.

The Republican establishment, or what remains of it, rose up to smite Gingrich as he surged in the polls after winning a landslide in the South Carolina primary Jan. 21, fearful that putting the former House speaker - who resigned from Congress following 1998 midterm losses that also came after an ethics case against him - would hurt the party in the fall.

Romney and an allied super PAC have spent millions on television ads attacking Gingrich for that ethics lapse, his history of making bold but controversial statements, and his mercurial personality.

On Friday, fresh poll results suggested that the politics of rage may have its limits for Gingrich, as Romney opened up a lead in a Florida race that was a dead heat earlier in the week.

Yet the conflicts within the Republican Party remain.

"I'm a Newt-er," said Eli Knighton, 68, a semiretired salesman from Fruitland Park, Fla., with some rental properties, who came to cheer on Gingrich at the tea-party rally. "He has the courage to stand up and take a beating if he has to in order to make bold changes."

Knighton said it was wrong that half the people in the United States pay no income taxes, and that in his view, the "gravy train" of government benefits has grown too large and President Obama and leaders in academia and trade unions want to move toward socialism.

Likening the anger of the vast majority of regular working Americans to the French Revolution, Knighton said, "Bubba is ready to come to town, and the last time Bubba came to town, Louis and Marie Antoinette had a very bad day.

"This country is a tinderbox," he said.

At the Wellington Branch Library in Palm Beach County this past week, Annarose Wampner took advantage of Florida's early voting period to cast a ballot for Romney. She likes that the former Masschusetts governor had a business career and is not an "insider" in Washington, though she initially supported Gingrich.

"I'm not basing my vote on debating skills - I'm concentrating on who would be best for America," said Wampner, 73, a Realtor who owned a weight-loss business and raised four sons as a single mother. She said she briefly took food stamps at one low point, until she felt badly about that and landed a sales job.

"The anger that Gingrich shows is somehow mistaken for strength," she said. "I'm frightened about having an angry person for president.. . . Romney has been steady all his life; there have been no big bumps. People say that he's bland, but he's someone you can depend on."

Romney, who once supported abortion rights (he now opposes them) and implemented an individual health-insurance mandate as Massachusetts governor, has had difficulty earning support from more conservative Republican voters during the campaign.

Exit-poll data from the first three primary-season states show that Romney has done best with the wealthiest and best-educated GOP voters, and with those who are neutral toward or disapproving of the tea-party movement. Gingrich has had a base among less educated, middle-income Republicans and those who identify as a tea-party members.

Yet Romney has opened up a 38 percent to 29 percent lead over Gingrich in a Quinnipiac University Poll of likely Florida GOP primary voters, released Friday. Romney had gained 2 percentage points of support and Gingrich had lost 5 points compared with the Quinnipiac survey released two days earlier.

Results of the latest poll were based on interviews conducted Tuesday through Thursday with 580 Republican registered voters who said they were likely to vote in the primary, and were subject to a margin of error of 4.1 percentage points. Most of the interviews were conducted before Thursday night's debate in Jacksonville, which Romney seemed to dominate.

"Momentum doesn't work this year," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. After all, he said, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum got no bounce in New Hampshire from his Iowa caucus showing, and Romney did not see a carryover to South Carolina from his victory in New Hampshire's primary.

"They are different states with different electorates," Brown said. "Florida's electorate is more diverse and less conservative than South Carolina's." The Sunshine State has a smaller population of evangelical Christians, for instance, so social issues are less paramount, he said.

That equation may help explain why Santorum, who stresses those issues, has trailed badly in polls here. Though his campaign is low on money, he underlined his vow to stay in the race by announcing the opening of a new campaign headquarters Saturday - in Nevada, which holds its GOP caucus four days after Florida's vote.

Gingrich, campaigning in Port St. Lucie on Saturday, said he, too, would fight on to the August convention even if he loses Tuesday, telling reporters, "Why don't you ask Gov. Romney what he will do if he loses?" (Romney, in Panama City, said, "I think we are going to win here - I sure hope so.")

Lucille Strippoli, 68, voted for Romney at the library in Palm Beach County. She worried about Gingrich's ascendance after South Carolina and believes he would not be a winner in the fall.

"He's smart and he's a fighter, but I think Newt is unpredictable," said Strippoli, the retired CEO of an auto-parts company. "He's a lone cannon waiting to go off. He's also a big-government guy. When he tries to approach something, it will be on a grand plan. . . . I am not impressed with his history, having to resign. He's too frenetic in his approach."

At the Florida Shoot Straight gun shop in West Palm Beach, Dick Young had just finished an hour of target practice Friday, firing 200 rounds from his Glock .357 and .38 Special handguns. Young, who last supported a Democrat when John F. Kennedy ran against Richard Nixon, said he was supporting Romney.

"I just don't like some of the things Gingrich has done," said Young, 66, who spent decades as a yacht captain for the late Fitz Dixon, the Main Line multimillionaire who had a home in Palm Beach. "He's a little shady. . . . Of course, all politicians are shady. But I think Romney is our best bet. It will be tough to beat Obama."

But tea-party activist Michael Hurley has a wooden sign up on family property along U.S. 441 in Eustis, Fla. that reads, "Without God, it's 'One Nation Under.' " He said he was inclined to vote for Gingrich because Romney did not seem firm enough to him to halt the nation's drift.

Said Hurley, 65, a carpenter: "When they got off the Mayflower they didn't say, 'Where's the welfare office? Where's my food stamps?' "

Herman Cain, who ended his presidential bid in early December, endorsed Newt Gingrich on Saturday night, three days before the crucial Florida primary.

"I hereby officially and enthusiastically endorse Newt Gingrich for president of the United States," Cain declared in a surprise appearance with Gingrich at the Lincoln Day dinner of the West Palm Beach County Republican Party.

Cain said that he knew what the "sausage grinder" of the presidential campaign was all about and that Gingrich was going through it now. "I am inspired," Cain said. "You are inspired."

Gingrich has also received the endorsement of another former presidential candidate, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.

Cain, who suspended his campaign after reports that he had had a longtime affair, defended Gingrich earlier this month after CNN asked Gingrich at a debate about his former wife's assertion that they had had an open marriage.

"I loved Newt Gingrich's response because that's the same crap that they pulled on me, and that's what's wrong with politics," Cain said. "This is what's turning the American people off. What does something that happened 20 years ago relative to an ex-wife have to do with fixing America's problems today? Nothing."

- N.Y. Times News Service

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