SARASOTA, Fla. ? Newt Gingrich has staked his presidential bid on one idea: that he is best positioned to defeat President Barack Obama. Even some of his supporters seem to be struggling to buy the former House speaker's claim, an indication that chief rival Mitt Romney's efforts to undercut him may be working.
"Beating Obama is more important than everything else," Patrick Roehl, a 51-year-old computer software engineer, said in the midst of a packed Gingrich rally inside a Sarasota airport hangar this week. "Can Newt win? I'm not sure. He's got a lot of high negatives. The elections are won and lost in the middle. I'm not sure he appeals to the middle."
John Grainger, a 44-year-old assistant golf pro, doesn't like Romney. But he's having trouble shaking skepticism about Gingrich.
"I want to be a Newt supporter," he said. "This guy's going to have the guts to stand up and speak his piece ? no holds barred." But Grainger said he wasn't quite ready to back the former House speaker.
Interviews with more than a dozen Republican voters at Gingrich's overflowing rallies this week suggest that while many Florida voters love his brash style as they look for someone to take it to Obama, they also have lingering doubts about whether the Republican's intellectual bomb-throwing alone will make him the strongest Obama opponent.
Romney and his allies have spent a week working to stoke those doubts with Florida Republicans ahead of Tuesday's primary. And the GOP's establishment wing has started to help the former Massachusetts governor make that case by castigating Gingrich at every turn.
On television and on the campaign trail, Romney and his allies have steadily highlighted Gingrich's liabilities ? consulting contracts and ethics investigations among them. And they've suggested that more baggage could emerge in the fall, when the Republican nominee would be at the height of a general election battle against Obama.
"In the case of the speaker, he's got some records which could represent an October surprise," Romney said this week, referring to Gingrich's consulting work and ethics allegations when he was in the House. "We could see an October surprise a day from Newt Gingrich."
An outside group dedicated to helping Romney has spent almost $9 million on Florida television advertising, including a massive $4 million investment this week alone, to make the case even more explicitly.
"Newt Gingrich's tough talk sounds good, but Newt has tons of baggage. How will he ever beat Obama?" says the new ad from the so-called super PAC, Restore Our Future.
Gingrich, to be sure, is not letting such criticism go unanswered. He's telling everyone ? on the trail, in television interviews, on conference calls and in fundraising messages ? that he alone can defeat Obama. He points to his 12 percentage point victory in the South Carolina primary as proof.
Exit polling there showed that the majority of Republican voters, 51 percent, said that Gingrich was better suited to defeat the Democratic president.
"Their highest value was beating Obama," Gingrich told evangelical voters this week. "And if they thought Romney was the only person who could beat Obama, then they would swallow a lie. But the minute they thought there were two people who could beat Obama, they suddenly turned and said, Well, you know, maybe we should be for Newt."
Polls suggest that Gingrich could defeat Romney in Florida, a surge fueled partly by growing support from the tea party movement and continued anti-Romney sentiment. Gingrich drew massive crowds at venues across Florida this week.
But in those swelling crowds were conservatives who said they were drawn less by Gingrich's electability than his fiery rhetoric.
"He's a fighter. Mitt, I think, is too wishy-washy," said Dominique Boscia, a 43-year-old unemployed woman from Lakewood Ranch. "I like feisty people. I like people who have spunk."
That's certainly Gingrich. For months, he has used aggressive debate performances to fuel his underdog candidacy. He has consistently thrilled conservatives by promising to take the fight directly to Obama in a series of free-form debates modeled after the 1860 meetings between Illinois Senate candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas.
Should Obama refuse, Gingrich says he'll follow the president on the campaign trail until he agrees.
That gets good applause lines at rallies. But a closer look at polling suggests that a debate beat down doesn't necessarily mean Gingrich can beat the president in an election that will include independents and Democrats.
Gingrich struggled among independents in a recent Washington Post-ABC News national poll, in which 53 percent gave him unfavorable marks and just 22 percent had a favorable opinion of the former House speaker. While Romney has typically polled better among independents, the poll ? conducted between Jan. 18 and 22 ? found virtually no difference: 51 percent of independents viewed him unfavorably, compared with 23 with favorable views.
But when all Florida voters, including independents and Democrats, are asked to weigh in, Romney appears to have a strong advantage over Gingrich, according to a poll conducted by Suffolk University-WSVN-TV Miami. Romney would defeat Obama here 47 percent to 42 percent; Gingrich would lose, earning just 40 percent to Obama's 49 percent of likely Florida general election voters.
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