play basketball for awhile. i don t watch espn. i don t know what his rhythms are, but this is a guy who is a brilliant performer who may well get reelected at the present date. and who frankly happens to be a partial part-time president. he really is like e the substitute referees in the sense that he s not a real president. he doesn t do things presidents do. he doesn t worry about things presidents do. but he has the white house. he has enormous power. he ll go down in history as president. and i suspect he s contemptuous of the the rest of us. that s new englat gingrich s he s not a real president. and also he s lazy and has rhythm. newt gingrich is the one who called president obama the food stamps president. it was gingrich who suggested a
the largest haul yet. the winner takes all of them and seizes momentum as the clear-cut front-runner. so if the polls are right, mitt romney could be coasting to an easy win. cnn s john zarella is at a polling place in tampa. john s, how s the turnout been? reporter: real good. this is actually the largest republican precinct in hillsboro county, the tampa area. about 3800 registered republicans here, and turnout has been very good this morning. a lot of people going before work. a lot of families coming before dropping off their kids at school. so quite a good turnout. there s 232,000 registered republicans in hillsboro county. i talked to the election supervisor a little while ago. he was telling me that they expected a very good turnout counting all of the early voting and the people that are likely to vote today could be 40 to 50%, he said, of that 232,000. so he expects quite a few people to vote today. here, kyra, is an example of the ballot we were talking about earl
how important is that? the eyes of the primary voters? being a good debaters is important and probably most republican agree that newt gingrich is the strongest debater although i have to say that rick santorum had a very good night on thursday night. there are many other factors involved. there s vision, there s record and as i mentioned before. temperament and judgment and it s the temperament and judgment criteria where newt has to persuade a lot of people he s up to the job. this is why the romney campaign brings out a former colleague of speaker gingrich s, they re erratic and they re trying to get at the idea he s not the most levelheaded fellow. they re beating that drum and they will do that for a long, long time. let s talk about santorum. look, i m the guy, republican who can reach blue collar voters and the people our party needs to be able to put together in a majority.
millions much dollars in super pac money went right after him and he plummeted. how do you recover from that? well, gingrich was fourth with 14% of the vote, but the ever inventive gingrich seems to have a new and unusual strategy, a plan to join forces in some way with rick santorum who came within eight votes of beating mitt romney. last night gingrich heaped praise on santorum for running what he called a great, positive campaign. so when asked by radio anchor laura ingraham today if he could see a scenario under which he would align with santorum to beat romney, gingrich leaped. absolutely. of course. rick and i, we have a 20-year friendship, we are both rebels. if you take santorum and perry and bachman and gingrich, you get some sense of what a small minority romney really represents. though it s not entirely clear what gingrich has in mind,
and he plummeted. how do you recover from that? well, gingrich was fourth with 14% of the vote, but the ever inventive gingrich seems to have a new and unusual strategy, a plan to join forces in some way with rick santorum who came within eight votes of beating mitt romney. last night gingrich heaped praise on santorum for running what he called a great, positive campaign. so when asked by radio anchor laura ingraham today if he could see a scenario under which he would align with santorum to beat romney, gingrich leaped. absolutely. of course. rick and i, we have a 20-year friendship, we are both rebels. if you take santorum and perry and bachman and gingrich, you get some sense of what a small minority romney really represents. though it s not entirely clear what gingrich has in mind, analysts say gingrich isn t his problem. santorum is, because he s