Race tightens and gets increasingly negative in Florida

By Nik Rule
On Twitter: @NikRule 

The bump that Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich received from South Carolina has all but disappeared. Just a week ago Gingrich was leading by double digits in many public opinion polls.

However, today Rasmussen released its daily tracking poll and Mitt Romney has jumped out to an eight-point lead. Four days ago, in the same poll, Newt was in command 41% to 32%.

This comes amidst a 24-hour period in which Newt has been facing the brunt of a calculated attack of leaked information that has made headlines all throughout the day. The information, attacking Gingrich’s message that he is a Reagan conservative, comes from interviews in the 1980’s and with political insiders at the time claiming that Newt was actually a critic of Reagan’s time in the White House.

Drudge Report, the popular political and current events website began slowly linking the accounts at midnight. The strategy behind the timing of the barrage of attacks on Newt is however puzzling, playing right into tonight’s debate where he is more than comfortable confronting negative information about him.

However, if Newt has a sub-par night as he did on Monday, the momentum Romney seems to have could carry him to a Florida win. Not to mention there were over 500,000 absentee ballots requested that will undoubtedly benefit Romney as his campaign has made a strategic push to turn out Florida supporters early over the last month.

Today’s news comes as both campaigns (not their Super Pac’s) continue to ramp up the negative ads. Click here to view one from Newt and here to view another from Romney.

Despite being in the middle of week that has been very productive for Romney, Gingrich did receive an important southern Republican endorsement from former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson. The question is will it be enough?

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