Mitt Romney, coming on first, mentioned his Republican opponents only in passing, and not by name, and then went on to launch a full-throated attack on Barack Obama and his administration. Rick Santorum, speaking second, talked first and with great fervor about the recovery of his daughter Bella and then segued into talking about running in the contests to come, with some contrast to Obama—but he was speaking in a very small room to a very small audience in Las Vegas.
The big question is whether Newt Gingrich would continue to hammer Mitt Romney as he has been doing in the last several days of the Florida primary campaign. The answer: no. He got in some digs against the big money spent against him and an unnamed “Massachusetts moderate” (not “Massachusetts liberal”). But then he quickly went on to attack Obama with as much vehemence as Romney had done, and then spoke with great passion about what he would do in his first hours as president.
My sense is that he knows those hours will never come, but he clearly relished the vision of becoming president—and that he hopes a conservative constituency around the nation will rally to that vision as well. The significant thing is that he could have gone scorched earth against Romney, and didn’t. A letdown for Democrats who hoped he would take the opportunity to tear the Republican party apart.
