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So it comes down to Florida — again

Inconvenient as it may be for political reporters paid to handicap the 2012 presidential contest right through to its conclusion on Nov. 6, the race may well be over by next Wednesday morning, the first day of February, 2012.

By the end of the previous evening — Tuesday, Jan. 31 — Republicans in Florida will have picked not only their candidate but arguably and perhaps inadvertently the next president of the United States, a man who may or may not be their candidate.

Here’s the logic of that thinking.

The candidate who wins the primary here will be the party’s nominee to face President Obama in November. But Republicans universally agree: Not every one of their candidates can beat President Obama, either in Florida or in the nation.

Pick the wrong candidate, the logic goes, and you’ve just elected President Obama to a second term.

Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are battling to win Florida, a state considered crucial for garnering the GOP nomination. PHOTOS BY R. GINO SANTA MARIA, CHRISTOPHER HALLORAN, RICH KOELE / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM / FLORIDA WEEKLY ILLUSTRATION History suggests as much.

Through 10 presidential election cycles since the state’s primary process was modernized in 1972, Florida Republicans have demonstrated an infallible authority. When they pick a primary candidate, he becomes a presidential candidate.

That was true 40 years ago when Florida’s GOP voters picked incumbent President Richard Nixon, and it’s been true ever since, as the history of Florida’s primary-winners shows.

In 1976, Florida’s GOP pick was Gerald Ford. The choice was Ronald Reagan in 1980 (who lost the primary here in 1976), followed by Reagan again in ’84; George H.W. Bush in ’88 and ’92; Bob Dole in ’96; George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004; and John McCain in 2008.

KIRKPATRICK Each of those men, Florida primary winners, sought the White House as the standard bearers of what is now almost a century of Republican social and economic values.

(Coincidentally, Florida voters in general elections bet correctly on the next president 20 out of 21 times since 1928, only failing in 1992 when they picked incumbent Pres. Bush but the nation sent Mr. Clinton to the White House.)

All of which suggests why everything Republican in 2012 may be on the line this week in Florida.

What does that mean for Florida’s citizens?

From east to west and north to south — from Palm Beach Gardens to Punta Gorda, and from Fort Myers to Bonita Springs and Naples where Republicans have long dominated local politics — Florida Weekly sought the opinions of men and women who have spent years thinking Republican thoughts.

KNOWLES Here you will see how they judged the current week on the eve of its arrival, how they measure the candidates in the Republican race, and how they weigh the issues as voting day approaches.

They’re weighing none of it lightly.

“This is the most important election of our lives,” insists Lavigne Kirkpatick, the newly appointed spokeswoman for the Tea Party in Naples. She led Republican Gov. Charlie Crist’s gubernatorial campaign in Collier County in 2006, and headed the McCain-Palin team there in the 2008 election.

“Obama is not going to be easy to beat. He isn’t spending one dime right now. He’s the only candidate facing us. And he’s letting everybody else burn up their energy and money. Whoever your candidate is now, we all have to come together behind one.”

Will the third man please sit down?

PERSONS But coming together is a hat trick that requires an answer to the obvious question: Who is the right candidate in the minds of Florida’s Republicans?

Following Mr. Gingrich’s prairie-fire win by 12 percentage points in South Carolina last week, many observers now call it a two-man race.

But that analysis falls short of reality, according to Steve Abrams, a commissioner and head of the Gingrich campaign in Palm Beach County. Mr. Abrams also serves on the Gingrich team’s state steering committee.

There are two men capable of winning, perhaps, but a third man who could determine who he’ll be, Mr. Abrams suggests. And that third man isn’t Ron Paul, who continued to run a distant but vocal fourth as the political parade thundered out of the Palmetto State and into the Sunshine State.

“The first thing Newt faces doesn’t have to do with Newt as much as with what Rick Santorum does,” Mr. Abrams explains.

The former Pennsylvania senator is the third man in the mind of many who support Mr. Gingrich — and they’d like him to sit down and shut up now, not later.

“Ultimately, no matter how good a campaign Newt runs here, the Romney alternative vote keeps splitting,” Mr. Abrams concludes. “So Santorum either needs to drop out, or do poorly enough that he’s not a factor in the race. Then you’ll have the one-on-one showdown everyone’s been waiting for.”

Which isn’t quite how John Knowles sees it. The director of development and external affairs at the Ave Maria University School of Law, Mr. Knowles spent a decade in Michigan politics before moving to Naples.

“I think this will go longer than anybody realizes,” he predicts. “You have three candidates that have the will and resources to move into the future.”

And Mr. Santorum, vocal champion of socially conservative moral values, isn’t one of them.

“Those three are Mitt, Newt and Ron Paul,” explains Mr. Knowles. “Santorum lacks national structure and the financial backing to mount an ongoing campaign into March and April.”

The showdown

To many, March and April lie in another world, even if Mr. Santorum and Mr. Paul continue maneuvering to influence the frontrunners until then.

The showdown appears to be here and now, and for the Republicans that means it’s essential to get out and vote, advises Mr. Knowles.

“It’s not the people who choose, it’s the people who choose to vote who choose,” he notes. That may be true both in the primary this week, and on Nov. 6.

Now the baton of choice has been passed with great fanfare from a small bastion of Republicanism in South Carolina — more conservative, more distinctly Southern, more strictly dependent on the attitudes of Tea Partiers and Evangelical Republicans — to a large one, a Sunshine State of pluralists, of diverse viewpoints and allegiances, of widely varied geographies that can be reached most effectively with expensive advertising.

And the pass was not smooth.

Emerging from the state neck-and-neck in the primary win-lose column — but with one candidate bloodied and reeling from lackluster showings that he sought to overcome Monday night in the first Florida debate — Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney now realistically represent the Republican choices.

And each is bringing the muscle of a two-year-old Supreme Court decision into play significantly for the first time in modern politics.

The decision, known as Citizens United, allows super PACs to spend as much money as they desire to promote a candidate without identifying the sources of that money. In Mr. Romney’s case, that has amounted to $4 million in Florida alone, even before the week began, according to news reports.

“The Sunshine State will be blanketed with numerous ads all week, particularly from Mr. Romney — more aggressive, attacking ads,” says Mr. Knowles. “You’ll see all kinds of super PAC advertising. And the evidence is overwhelming that these expensive negative creative attack ads work almost every time.”

Out of the fray, one candidate will emerge next Tuesday night as the Florida pick. And that man will very likely become not only the Republican nominee, but the next president.

The baggage train

That is, if Republican voters this week make the right choice.

Unfortunately, with the Democrats looking on like wolves watching the progress of Red Riding Hood, Republicans will exploit their own weaknesses for the next six days, many fear.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has refused to endorse any candidate, called the finger-pointing, personal style of the campaign so far a “circular firing squad.” The quote appeared in The New York Times. The candidates’ weaknesses appear to be considerable, which leaves much to point at. But their baggage may also prove inconsequential.

One has hidden his tax history for years, for reasons not even his supporters can rationalize (that’s changing as the week progresses, and will change even more before long, he announced under pressure). He once lambasted the late Sen. Edward Kennedy for doing the same thing even while he carried on the tradition. To complicate matters for him, his father, one-time presidential candidate George Romney, set a much different example by releasing 12 years of tax records.

(The late Mr. Romney also had a tendency to change his mind at the wrong political moment, like some critics accuse the current candidate of doing. When he reversed his position on the Vietnam War in the contest to choose a Republican candidate for the 1968 presidential race, he went suddenly from first in the polls to historic obscurity, leaving the field open for Mr. Nixon.)

The other candidate — the flamboyant South Carolina primary winner, Mr. Gingrich — has hidden two adulterous affairs behind a veneer of self-righteous indignation and puffy moralizing about gay marriage and women’s choice advocates.

One candidate — Mr. Romney — has hidden the greed that powered tremendous corporate success at Bain Capital, the firm he headed for many years, behind a business-is-good-for-America arrogance, in the eyes of his critics.

And the other, Mr. Gingrich, has hidden an ethical history pocked with missteps in his professional as well as his personal life behind a proud justification that such “grandiose” acting and thinking is all-American — suitable for a nation of people who think big and act on it.

Mr. Gingrich faced 84 ethics charges during his time as speaker of the house in the 1990s. He was fined $300,000, becoming the first speaker in history to be so chastised. While consulting or lobbying from 2000 to 2010 for Freddie Mac, the government’s secondary home-mortage company, his Gingrich Group was paid $1.6 million or more. He had previously blamed Freddie Mac for the financial implosion that led to recession, and argued that the money he took paid for his service as a “historian,” not a lobbyist.

There is more that Democrats are likely to exploit, especially in the case of Mr. Gingrich, and Republicans know it.

“The Democrats are fantastic at playmaking a negative campaign,” notes Jenna Persons, an attorney and partner at Strayhorn & Persons in Fort Myers.

Ms. Persons, a sixth generation native, worked as a political staffer for Senate Majority Whip Roy Blunt for two years after graduating from law school at George Washington University, before returning to her hometown. She is now a member of the Lee Executive Republican Committee.

The media elite and forgiveness

For his part, Mr. Gingrich has claimed that criticisms of his behavior are part of an “elite” and “liberal” media bias that has insisted for half a century that Americans become un-American.

That media-is-to-blame reaction is one some Republicans here embrace, as well.

“I believe the news media has been telling all of us that Romney is the candidate for the last year,” says Mrs. Kirkpatrick.

“My personal concern about that is, if the media is telling me that this is the person, the last thing I want to do is listen to them. Do I really want the media telling me this is the person?”

Republicans everywhere, ultimately, appear to be a forgiving group when it comes to fellow Republicans — they’re willing to forgive both the personal, in Mr. Gingrich’s case, and the professional in the case of both candidates — as long as there is some transparency.

“Gingrich has navigated the micro-issue of his ex-wife (going public) really skillfully,” says Mr. Knowles. “Its not news, it’s been out there already, he’s skillful in pointing out (his side of the story).”

“And people are tired of it,’ adds Mrs. Kirkpatick — “tired of the personal stuff that goes on in people’s lives. No human is perfect, and some people, who could be the greatest statesmen, won’t run because they don’t want their mistakes revealed.”

Clearly, those people do not include Mr. Gingrich or Mr. Romney.

The former could dispense with his tax and income problem in 24 hours, by releasing the information — simply by being transparent, advises Mr. Abrams. And the latter is a historian who has made his personal life history, along with almost everybody else.

“When you start going down the ladder to the point where the discussion is about Newt’s marriage 20 years ago, it’s not a relevant factor for anyone but a handful of voters,” Mr. Abrams says.

The vortex question

Therefore the choice for many would seem to come down to issues — but even that proves a misconception about GOP thinking this week.

The issues themselves may be secondary to a single overriding question, the pundits agree: Who can beat Mr. Obama?

And who can beat him not just in the final rugged run-up to November but this week in Florida, where the presidential race itself is a distinct shadow splashing visibly through the wake of the primary race?

That question, more than any issue, creates the compelling vortex gravity of the 2012 presidential race, and of the Florida Republican primary here.

More than jobs and the economy, more than how much to lower the tax rate and for whom, more than how much to reduce the size of government and how much to deregulate business, more than the questions of abortion or same-sex marriage or immigration, Florida Republicans this week are agonizing over an unequivocal Lombardian philosophy: There is no second place. There are only winners and losers.

“Whether you’re an evangelical Christian or a Tea Partier or a moderate Republican, your first question should be, ‘Who can beat Obama?’” advises Ms. Persons.

“One thing that unites the national security Republicans, the Libertarians, the social conservatives, and the moderates is that almost all Republicans want to see Obama defeated in November,” observes Mr. Knowles.

Perhaps that unity does not characterize Republicans here quite yet, however.

Meanwhile, what about the issue of war?

Terrorism, Afghanistan and Iraq — three distinct wars that defined the first decade of the 21st century and deeply shaped its presidential elections — were Bush and McCain-era issues, in the minds of Republican voters.

Tellingly, none of the men or women who joined Florida Weekly to think through this Republican week initiated any conversation about war, although two wars continue.

The nuanced primary

All of this points to the significant risk

Republicans nationwide are running this week as Florida’s GOP voters shoulder the weight of the contest.

The primary process itself is finicky and complex. To win, a Republican candidate must garner 1,212 votes from delegates representing the 50 states at the national convention.

Some states, 17 of them, allow Independents, or Independents and Democrats together, to vote in the Republican primary (Florida does not; it hosts a “closed” primary).

Others still hold caucuses, a throwback to the old days when small groups around the state would gather in public to take a show of hands or vote, sending delegates to the national convention that way.

Normally, Florida would command 99 of those 1,212 necessary delegates, or just over 8 percent.

But that changed after the state’s Republican leaders disobeyed the marching orders of the party’s national leadership last year.

Instead of accepting a mid- or lateseason date on the primary calendar, they shouldered their way nearly to the front of the line, to stand just behind Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina in the GOP schedule.

“I’m proud of the state leaders for taking the initiative, and insuring we play a major role in presidential picks,” says Ms. Persons. “I’m proud of them for looking out for our interests.”

But that looking out has come with a cost.

To punish the lack of discipline, national Republican leaders recently cut Florida’s delegates in half, from 99 to 50. (The Sunshine State’s delegates also lost their front-row seats at the convention, along with reservations to the most convenient and proximate hotels).

None of that will likely matter as much as what the nation observes this week in Florida, Republicans here believe. Nor as much as what primary voters decide Tuesday — a reality foreseen, perhaps, by the state’s Republican leadership last year.

Florida is defined as a “swing state.” That’s because nearly 19 million residents represent a hodgepodge of demographic and political constituencies that chose a Democratic leader four years ago on the backs of the state’s Independents. The inability of Republicans to rally decisively behind a single candidate now could leave room not only for continued Republican in-fighting, but for exploitation by a Democratic machine at once wealthy, well-oiled and rested. If that happens, Republicans may lose Florida and the nation, once again.

That’s the bottom line this week in a state plumped by 29 electoral votes. Florida is tied for third with New York, behind California (55) and Texas (34).

Not just in November, not just in August, but right now: The Sunshine State is the key prize for Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Romney, and a sidelines onlooker this week, President Barack Obama. ¦