Oranges and Orators
January 25, 2012
BY DICK METHIA
It’s not just snowbirds encamped in the Sunshine State this month. The remaining four Republican presidential candidates are tearing through orange groves rounding up voters to help them win Florida’s important primary Jan. 31. This political foursome is a more entertaining attraction than Sea World.
Former front runner Mitt Romney, desperate to be loved by his party’s conservative base, continues to be saddled with a political curse: former governor of liberal Massachusetts. But he has one decidedly strong suit. He looks like a Republican president.
A recent poll asked voters to choose the candidate who looked most like their idea of a Republican president. Mitt won hands down. It takes good looks and a nice head of hair to be a GOP president. (How did Calvin Coolidge ever get elected?) As long as Romney keeps Reagan’s hair, he’s a shoo-in.
By contrast, Newt Gingrich has a snowball “do.” The Republican president Newt most resembles is the rotund Howard Taft who once got stuck in the White House bath tub. In spite of his snowy coif and extra poundage Newt is gaining steam in Florida and is given a good chance to pull off a victory here. No surprise given the number of white-haired voters in this retirement state.
Former senator Rick Santorum doesn’t exude “glam” like Romney or set off verbal pyrotechnics like Gingrich. Santorum is a glum preacher. Santorum whines a lot. His problem is that we’ve already had one whining president and voters don’t want to resurrect the Jimmy Carter years.
Santorum’s detractors call him “Sanctorum” because of his ultra-conservative religious views. His face is frozen in a perpetual frown and his voice makes even his attempts at humor sound petulant. Onstage Santorum makes Puritan witch hunter Cotton Mather look positively giddy.
Bringing up the rear is obstetrician Ron Paul, half as tall as Romney and half as round as Gingrich. Having delivered more babies than votes the Texas congressman is no longer running for president. He says he’s staying in the race only to collect enough delegates to influence the party’s platform. That’s a thankless task. Presidential candidates are about as loyal to their party platforms as the Desperate Housewives are to their hubbies.
In South Carolina, candidates learned that having a lot of a good thing can be a bad thing.
Romney’s got money. A whole lot of money. Romney earned over $42 million in two years. That’s about $1,750,000 a month and he didn’t even have a job. Mitt pays only 15% tax, has a Swiss bank account and millions stashed in the Cayman Islands. That smacks more of a villain in a John Grisham novel than a candidate looking for working family votes.
Gingrich, no pauper himself, has savaged Romney over his wealth and garnered plenty of voter outrage.
Trying to divert media attention from his own financial abundance, Romney charges that his nemesis Gingrich has a problem with abundance of his own. By Mitt’s Mormon standards, Gingrich has had too many wives (three). South Carolina primary voters, more concerned about jobs than marital fidelity, paid no heed and launched Newt to a spectacular win.
However voters in the Sunshine State may re-shuffle the deck next Tuesday, this political poker game is far from over.