Newt Gingrich: Obama’s Objective Ally?

The result of the Florida primary will be informative. Will Mitt Romney have succeeded in getting out politically alive from under the steamroller called Newt Gingrich, who has rolled on top of him 24/7 for several weeks? After the latest debates, Romney has taken the bull by its horns. To begin with, the Mormon candidate has welcomed into his campaign team a new counselor to strengthen it against the hand-to-hand fighting that the endless Republican debates have become. But, even if the GOP gives the impression of unity behind its candidate after the Republican convention, in what state will Romney arrive in the final stretch of the presidential race against Barack Obama, which starts next September? It’s a question that White House strategists are passionate about.

Since the beginning of the primaries, Obama’s team has been preparing itself to confront Mitt Romney next November. What the White House had not foreseen is that the ex-governor of Massachusetts, who already has trouble stirring up enthusiasm, will arrive very much weakened by self-inflicted blows (the tax returns, the Goldman Sachs and Bain Capital investments) and the violent blows carried out for weeks by Newt Gingrich, especially as, this Sunday, the ex-Speaker of the House confirmed that he was staying in the race for the nomination until the end. Romney will finish in shreds.

From the start, Barack Obama’s team, which had put Romney’s career under an electronic microscope, knew that [Romney] had major structural weaknesses, although Romney wanted to juxtapose his business experiences with Barack Obama’s teaching background in regards to the question of putting the nation back on track economically. But the blows were inflicted by Romney himself when he refused to make his tax returns public, when the extent of his fortune was discovered: a bank account in Switzerland (!), even if it has since then been closed, and investments in the Cayman Islands — not exactly paragons of morality. All of this in a country shaken for three years by a wave of populism and an unemployment rate around 9 percent.

The Republicans’ lamentable performances are a godsend for the Obama team. The election is going to depend upon the independents, those voters that are with neither Democrats nor Republicans. The more the Republicans veer to the right to seduce the Republican base, the more the independents tip into the Obama camp. According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, twice as many independents have a negative opinion of Romney than a positive one, while 55 percent have a positive image of Obama, his highest level since April 2011.

Despite the good news of a Republican performance that leads the Party completely outside of the “mainstream” of American ideas, the White House remains nonetheless fixed on the 270 electoral college votes that must be picked up in November 2012. There is still work to do, but Romney, Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul (!) are giving a serious helping hand to the 44th.