Live coverage as Mitt Romney presses home his debate advantage and Newt Gingrich tries to kickstart his campaign.
• Live blogging now: Matt Wells
Time for some self promotion. Michael White, who was Washington correspondent of the Guardian from 1984 to 1988, has written a lovely piece about the GOP's Reagan legacy, invoked so often by Gingrich.
The egotistical Newt Gingrich, not averse to identifying himself with any passing hero, is keenest on grasping Reagan's coat tail. His congressional career took wing in the 1980s when blue-collar workers, already struggling to maintain their living standards, responded to Reagan's sunny nostalgia to become "Reagan Democrats". Yet Gingrich's erratic conduct, his rackety private life and flamboyant intellectualism – he may have written more books than Reagan read – only serve to highlight the contrast between the two men.
And my colleague here in the Guardian's New York HQ, Ed Pilkington, has been speaking to Ben Jones, the actor who played "Crazy" Cooter Davenport, the truck driving mechanic in the hit 1980s TV series, The Dukes of Hazzard. Jones, less famously, was the Democratic senator whose filed the complaints that led to Gingrich's Congressional downfall.
It's astonishing to me that this has come back around. It testifies to the fact that Mr Gingrich cannot be destroyed by conventional weapons – he is the abominable Newt Man.
To wit: my local paper has run a great piece dredging up Newt's old foes (and a few old friends) to reminisce about what a nasty man he was back then.
Here's good old Barney Frank:
Newt is the single most influential factor in replacing the politics in which you accepted the bona fides of your opponents and disagreed with them civilly with the politics of insisting that your opponents are bad people.
And Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma, disussing cassette tapes that Gingrich's political action committee distributed to party candidates, in which the now-former Speaker pumped up the invective.
It wasn't that he trained them to have a better understanding of foreign policy, or economic policy. They were techniques in how to wage a nasty partisan war against your opponent.
Back to Chris McGreal at the Hispanic Leadership network in Miami, where Newt Gingrich is speaking.
Gingrich is now addressing the Hispanic Leadership network in Miami. Beforehand he held a brief press conference at which various Hispanic leaders, including members of congress, endorsed him.
Gingrich was asked by a reporter if he would repudiate a headline on a pro-Israel publication that had him saying that if Obama remains in power, there is the risk of a second Holocaust.
Gingrich replied: "Allowing Iran to get nuclear weapons under Ahmadinejad runs the direct risk of a second Holocaust. Two or three weapons placed properly in Israel is the equivalent of a second Holocaust."
You may think that has little to do with Latin America but Gingrich managed to make a link. He went on to say that Ahmadinejad's growing ties with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela – "I do believe we have to take seriously Chavez when he says that he's anti-American" – is potentially the greatest threat to the US since the Soviet Union backed anti-American forces in Latin America.
If you thought this would be all over soon, then think again. Not even by Super Tuesday? You've gotta be kidding. For a start, Super Tuesday isn't even that super any more, with only ten primary elections and caucuses, down from 24 in 2008.
This very smart piece at Frontloading HQ, who know about these things, argues that Romney won't have enough momentum, or enough delegates, to wrap it up by early March.
Most nominations in the post-reform era have tended to be momentum contests with a frontrunner – having been established in the invisible primary – winning early and often and using those early wins as springboard into a Super Tuesday series of contests to build a seemingly insurmountable lead (both in momentum and in delegates).
Due to the way the primary calendar is set up in 2012 and the current fits and starts nature of the dynamic in the race, however, this cycle is shaping up differently. The notion of Mitt Romney sweeping or nearly sweeping the January contests and putting the nomination race to rest are gone – even with a Florida win. But the idea of a momentum contest – one that will typically develop behind the frontrunner, no matter how nominal – is not completely dead.
Just to clarify an earlier post about polls: we referred to a Quinnipiac poll that puts Romney nine points ahead, and an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that puts Gingrich ahead by the same margin. In fact that's comparing apples with pears, since the Quinnipac poll is a Florida survey (and therefore relevant) and the NBC one is a national poll (and therefore not so relevant).
Thanks to NuageNoir in the comments for pointing this out.
That NBC/WSJ poll which has Gingrich leading is a national poll, i.e., of Republican voters in the whole country. Which means it's pretty much irrelevant, since thre isn't a national primary. The only polls that count are polls of Florida voters, and those had Gingrich up earlier in the week and now have Romney up.
Richard Adams, whose shop I am minding today, pointed out in yesterday's blog that Newt Gingrich's fanciful idea of colonizing the moon runs contrary to the 1967 United Nations outer space treaty, to which the United States is a signatory.
Buzzfeed has more on the treaty:
Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.
Former presidential candidate John McCain, who's supporting Mitt Romney, has been speaking in Lakeland. He said Romney scored a "home run" in the debate last night (no surprise there) but interestingly said he thought that, after 19 debates, it was time to call time.
In Lakeland, McCain says Romney hit a "home run" in debate last night but thinks the debates "need to come to an end"
— Lindsey Boerma (@Lindsey_CBSNJ) January 27, 2012
McCain also dropped a not-subtle-at-all hint that Romney would pick Marco Rubio as his running mate if he won the nomination.
Shocked, SHOCKED that McCain would hint at Romney picking Rubio for veep right before Florida primary. #myfriends
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) January 27, 2012
Our correspondent in Miami, Chris McGreal, is up surprisingly early after a late night watcing the CNN debate with Cuban Americans in Little Havana, Miami, last night. He's at the Hispanic Leadership Network today, where Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are due to speak. In the meantime, everyone's favourite non-candidate, Florida Republcian senator Marco Rubio, has been saying some sensible things about immigration.
Gingrich and Romney are to address the Hispanic Leadership Network in Miami today in an attempt to court the Latino vote.
In a speech to the network this morning, Marco Rubio, the Republican senator from Florida, threw down a gauntlet to both men on the touchy subject of illegal immigration. He said that the right in America has used "harsh, intolerant" language over immigration and that politicians like him had been too slow to condemn it. He added that politicians of all stripes had gone about "dividing people along the lines of immigration" because it has been good politics.
He challenged the Republicans "to not just be anti-illegal immigrant party".
"We should be the pro-legal immigration party," he said.Rubio said that there is no way Americans will stand deporting 11m illegal immigrants and that a way has to be found to make those brought in to the country as children, who have grown up as Americans and who go to college or want to join the military, legal residents without encouraging more people to come illegally.
He said that there is also a need for a guest worker programme to serve, among others, the needs of the US agricultural industry which relies heavily on migrant and temporary labour. He said that if foreign workers knew that they could work, go home and return to work again the next season they would not stay illegally.
"You know why people overstay their visas? Because they're afraid if they leave they will never get back in," he said.
More on the Quinnipac University poll: here are the full numbers.
Romney: 38
Gingrich: 29
Paul: 14
Santorum: 12
It'll be interesting to see if Santorum can claw any ground back after a moderately strong debate performance last night. But I doubt it. He's pretty much given up on Floriday – and his campaign more broadly is fizzling fast.
It's the morning after the night before, when Newt Gingrich's famous debate "skills" failed him. Was it Mitt's new debate coach? Was it nasty CNN's fault for banning booing? Or is it that Newt just isn't quite the best debater in 200 years of US debating history? Who knows. In the meantime, here's where we're at this morning, courtesy of Ryan Devereaux.
Mitt Romney is pressing home his advantage after a strong perforamnce in the final Florida TV debate before polls open on Tuesday. In the 19th televised encounter of the campaign, Romney took the fight to Newt Gingrich, taking aim at a recently-pulled Gingrich attack ad in which the Massachusetts governor is described as "anti-immigrant". Romney branded the charge "repulsive".
Newt Gingrich failed to capitalise on earlier strong debate performances. Answering claims he had described Spanish as "the language of the ghetto". Gingrich said his comment had been "taken out of context". The former House speaker failed to land a punch on Romney over his investments in Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Goldman Sachs: in a well-prepared answer backed up by a detailed briefing note publlshed online at the same time, Romney pointed out that the former speaker has investments for mutual funds in both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Dejected, Gingrich replied, "All right."
Some of Romney's harshest criticism came from former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who took him to task for his Massachusetts health plan. Santorum made an impassioned argument that "Romneycare" was not different than "Obamacare". When CNN asked Santorum about Romney's suggestion that he "chill out" on the health care stuff, Santorum replied "Don't confuse passion with anger."
The candidates have four more days to shore up voters in the sunshine state. Quinnipiac University's latest Florida survey, out Friday, puts Romney nine points up. In national polling, Gingrich leads Romney by the same margin in a Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll out on Thursday evening.
If this race has taught us anything, however, it's that nothing is certain. Gingrich's shortcomings last night could prove decisive.