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Gingrich, Romney begin key Florida battle

AFP, Miami
The four remaining Republican presidential candidates set their sights yesterday on Florida as they prepared for their first televised debate since Newt Gingrich's stunning weekend win in South Carolina.
Gingrich's resounding victory Saturday turned the race on its head, and his politi-
cal resurrection ensures a dramatic 2012 battle to be the Republican standard-bearer against PresidentBarackObamaonNovember6.
It shattered the aura of invincibility surrounding ex-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and turned Florida's January 31 primary into a pivotal contest that could either confirm Gingrich's momentum or restore Romney as frontrunner.
Palm Beach County Republican Party chairman Sid Dinerstein said Florida was now the "make-or-break state" in the contest. "There is a very good chance therefore that after Florida the race is practically over," he told AFP
Yesterday night's debate in Tampa, on Florida's west coast, offers Romney a chance fora swift bounce-back
"It was not a great week for me," a stung Romney conceded to Fox News Sunday after watching his substantial lead in South Carolina evaporate in a matter of days. Gingrich eventually won by 12.5 percentage points.
The campaign rhetoric grew increasingly bitter as the multimillionaire investor Romney and pugnacious former House speaker Gingrich locked horns.
Romney said there was "no question" he would go after his rival's character more strongly than he has, implying he would call out Gingrich on his past ethics charges and his admitted marital affairs. "Character is a big part of leadership, as is vision, sobriety, steadiness. These are attributes which I think people want to see in their candidate."
Gingrich focused his attention on savaging the Democratic incumbent Obama, whom he portrayed as a dangerously weak radical whose first term has been a "disaster."
"Beating Barack Obama has to be the number one mission of the Republican Party," Gingrich told NBC's "Meet the Press," adding that Republicans needed a candidate "strong enough and tough enough" to take on the president.
He posed himself as the insurgent streetfighter up against the establishment candidate Romney.
Gingrich's win rekindled doubts about whether the relatively moderate Romney can rally the party's conservative core, which views him with suspicion.
Former senator Rick Santorum, who finished a distant third in South Carolina, painted them both as unelectable. Romney versus Gingrich is "a choice between a moderate and an erratic conservative," he told ABC.
After coming under pressure from Gingrich and others, Romney vowed to release his 2010 tax return today, seeking to dispel doubts over what he might be hiding ahead of the all-important Florida vote.