On Meet the Press Sunday, the Romney and Gingrich campaigns sent their best surrogates to discuss the Florida primary and represent the two candidates. John McCain represented Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson represented Newt Gingrich. As Romney rises in the polls days before Tuesday’s primary, McCain played up the importance of Florida while Thompson downplayed its importance. If the polls are right, Romney will win Florida, Thompson conceded, and with that he’ll get about 10 percent of the delegates. Reducing Florida to simply a delegate count — rather than a momentum-buildling or breaking moment.
The two also disagreed over Newt Gingrich’s record. McCain stressed the government shutdown which was “killing” Republicans at the time, as well as Newt’s embrace of earmarks. Thompson countered that there is an argument that if they had held out longer on the shutdown, Clinton would have caved.
