But it was Romney who claimed momentum Sunday as the two leading contenders set off on a final campaign sprint across Florida. An NBC News-Marist poll showed Romney leading Gingrich 42 percent to 27 percent, and a Miami Herald-Tampa Bay Times-El Nuevo poll had Romney with a similar lead, 42 percent to 31 percent.
“The people of Florida have watched the debates and listened to the speaker and listened to the other candidates and said, ‘You know what? Mitt Romney is the guy we’re going to support,’ ” Romney told a rally of more than 2,000 supporters in downtown Naples.
Gingrich, he said, is “finding excuses everywhere he can. He’s on TV this morning going from station to station complaining about what he thinks are the reasons he’s had difficulty here in Florida. But you know . . . the excuses are over. It’s time to produce. And I think each of us, if we fail somewhere, if we fail in a debate, if we fail to get the support of people, it’s time to look in the mirror.
“Mr. Speaker,” Romney added, “your trouble in Florida is not because the audience is too quiet or too loud — or because you have opponents that are tough. Your problem in Florida is that you worked for Freddie Mac at a time that Freddie Mac was not doing the right thing for the American people. And that you were selling influence in Washington at a time when we needed people to stand up for the truth in Washington.”
On the defensive, Gingrich repeated his claim that Romney is a liar and vowed to stay in the race until the end as he tries to cut into the former Massachusetts governor’s lead.
“I don’t know how you debate a person with civility if they’re prepared to say things that are just plain factually false,” Gingrich said during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”
Gingrich, who won the endorsement of former candidate Herman Cain over the weekend, said that “the conservatives are clearly rejecting Romney” and claimed the mantle as the race’s true conservative candidate.
After attending Sunday services at a Baptist church outside Tampa, Gingrich predicted that the race would be a “straight-out contest for the next four or five months” between the Republican party establishment he says Romney represents and grass-roots voters he says he represents.
“This debate is going to go on,” Gingrich said. “It’s going to get clearer and more decisive. And I think what we’re offering is very different. There is a reason that the New York and Washington establishment is opposed to me. I would genuinely change Washington. Romney would manage the decay.”
