Debate Takeaways: Gingrich Loses Groove, Romney Gains Ground

By Ronald Brownstein

January 26, 2012 | 10:51 PM

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MIAMI -- The takeaways took to the road for the latest Republican presidential debate. We watched along with a large crowd at the Hispanic Leadership Network, a Republican Hispanic group meeting here this week that co-sponsored the session. The crowd started raucous and engaged, but dwindled over the course of the two hours as the debate drifted in its final stages. But before the debate lost momentum, it left some clear impressions. Here are five:

1. Newt Gingrich has lost his groove. After dominating two debates in South Carolina, he has misplaced his timing in Florida. All night, he seemed like a power hitter in a slump: he lunged at change-ups and stood frozen at fastballs. Whether he tried confrontation or conciliation, Mitt Romney constantly beat him to the spot. Though Gingrich received more enthusiastic applause from the HLN crowd when he was announced than any other candidate, his attacks on Romney drew little response from the audience (the one exception was when he accused Romney of profiting, through his investments, on Freddie Mac and the housing crisis in general); Romney's responses, in fact, generally elicited more applause. And when Gingrich tried to take the high road, deriding moderator Wolf Blitzer's question about Romney's finances, the former Massachusetts governor still whacked him for failing to repeat on stage criticisms he has made on the stump. It got worse: Under assault from both Romney and Rick Santorum, the lunar space colony that Gingrich has talked about seemed not visionary but fanciful and impractical. Romney had his own share of awkward moments (when he denied knowing about an ad that he provided the voiceover approval for and when he also denied knowing about the investments in his trust). But on almost every direct encounter with Gingrich, Romney came out ahead.

2. By luck of the draw, the debate's first two questions allowed Romney to conspicuously position himself to Gingrich's right-and in so doing may have sealed Romney's advantage in the state. Gingrich's resurgence in South Carolina was fueled by the Republican coalition's most populist and conservative elements. But in the debate's first half-hour, it was Romney who identified both with conservative and populist causes through an extended discussion about illegal immigration and then housing (which again allowed him to criticize Gingrich for his work for Freddie Mac). That placed Romney on a high ground from which Gingrich never dislodged him; in fact, Gingrich seemed to lose heart for the fight as the evening progressed, leaving Santorum to deliver the most effective conservative case against Romney.

3. The exchanges between Gingrich and Romney on illegal immigration were especially instructive. The predominantly Hispanic HLN audience sat almost in stony silence when Gingrich criticized Romney's call for "self-deportation" as impractical, and also when he insisted the nation would not deport grandparents. The first time it applauded during the long discussion of immigration was when Gingrich said that English should be the nation's official language; the audience cheered loudly again when Romney rebuked Gingrich for calling him anti-immigrant. All of that offered vivid evidence that in a Florida Republican primary, the politics of immigration may not play the way many have assumed-with Gingrich winning favor among Hispanics for a more flexible policy. The response underlined the belief of Republican political consultants like Carlos Curbelo that leniency toward illegal immigrants isn't as big an issue here for a Hispanic community composed mostly of Cubans, Central Americans and Puerto Ricans as it would be in a state with many Mexican-American families more likely to be directly touched by the dynamic in some way.

4. As in several earlier debates, Santorum was the most effective in delivering the conservative case against Romney. Though he also nicked Gingrich, Santorum was particularly powerful and unrelenting in pressing Romney through a long discussion of health care; he even baited Romney into delivering a full-throated defense of an individual mandate for purchasing insurance that Democrats will doubtless enjoy airing in the fall if the former governor wins the nomination. But for Romney, the sting of those attacks is dramatically lessened by his awareness that any gains for Santorum are likely to come among the conservative voters that Gingrich must consolidate to have any chance of capturing Florida. It would be surprising if the debate didn't produce some benefit for Santorum; from his opening remarks introducing his aged mother, to his deft turn of a question about his wife into a declaration of his pro-life and religious credentials, he delivered a consistently engaging performance. In the process, ironically, he increased the odds that Romney will benefit from fragmentation among the conservative voters most skeptical of him.

5. All of the Republican contenders may be fortunate that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush decided not to seek the nomination this year. After Fred Malek, the big Republican fund-raiser and one of the group's founders, introduced Bush at the HLN event by asking the audience whether his resume made him sound "like somebody who would maybe make a good president," Bush delivered a personable, engaging and even intimate speech about opportunity and inclusion that held the audience rapt. And that was after holding a press availability in which he toggled between English and fluent Spanish for the press corps. The public may need some time before it accepts another Bush, but his short appearance left no doubt that he remains a major political talent. If Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is serious about his insistence that he doesn't want to run as vice president, Bush could be an attractive alternative with potentially substantial appeal not only in Florida, but in the Hispanic community elsewhere.

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