BILL PRESS: Well, as you know, the polls had no sooner closed in Florida, then MSNBC, FOX News, CNN and Associate Press — AP — all called it for Mitt Romney, it was a 15-point spread then and is still a 15-point spread.
Mitt Romney just coming out, thanking the crowd and giving, what we have to say, was a presidential-sounding address at any rate, at least laying out the themes that he plans to run on. And, listening down in Orlando, Florida — Florida native Craig Crawford, Craig, no bright spot for Newt Gingrich at all tonight, huh?
CRAIG CRAWFORD: Well, I just heard that South Carolina announced it will succeed from Florida.
You know, the really bad news for Gingrich — and the really good news for Romney, other than the bright-line numbers here — are that the exit polls show that two out of three voters today self-identified as tea partiers, meaning that Romney's starting to bring some of that vote in. Forty percent said they are very conservative. He beat Gingrich by 22 points among women.
The only bright side I can find, so far, for Gingrich is that they tied among evangelicals. Now, that didn't make a big difference because 60 percent of these folks said they're not evangelical, but we're moving on to deep south states that are evangelical-rich and they tied here among that vote. So, that might be the only glimmer of hope for Gingrich, if there is one.
PRESS: And Craig, the unspoken message of Mitt Romney's address tonight seemed to be — "The primary is over," right? I mean, "Now, here is what we're going to talk about," and it's all going after Obama.
CRAWFORD: Yeah, I think he just launched Newt Gingrich to the moon tonight, at least in his own mind.
But, you know, Republicans have something to worry about. The reason they tried to design a primary system backloading the primary to later in the year, is — they didn't want a situation where you had a presumed nominee in February who now has to fight for media attention for the next 10 months. They tried to design a system that did not do that, but these states didn't cooperate, so, now we may have that situation and you've got a sitting President which much more ability to command the news and control the news agenda, and here, Romney is going to be having to figure out ways to get attention.
PRESS: Now, Romney is also going to have to start expecting some incoming fire from the Obama campaign. And we saw the first part of it in a very, I think, funny way. David Axelrod tweeted, yesterday, a tweet: "How loving owners transport their dogs."
And then he put this photo on it. You can see the photo is President Obama in the presidential limousine with Bo looking out the window. A not-so-subtle way of saying Bo is not strapped on top of the car in a kennel, correct?
CRAWFORD: You know, those things are funny, but that's part of what I see as the psychological warfare of presidential politics and Mitt Romney just proved he's very good at it in Florida against Gingrich. And that's what the Obama folks are going to do.
I think — I believe — I'd be interested in how the governor feels about this. I think Democrats should go negative early and often and maybe right now, because Mitt Romney's going to get a lot of media attention in the short term in defining himself. I think Democrats need to define him on their own terms, but before Romney does it for himself.
A lot of Americans haven't paid that much attention and they're going to start paying attention and this is the time to define him on Democratic party terms with lots of television ads. Bill Clinton did that against Bob Dole in '96, very early — oddly enough, tied him to Newt Gingrich, who said "Medicare should die on the vine." And they connected Dole to that. It was very effective. And they did that early and they spent a lot doing that.
PRESS: Yeah, don't wait until the convention to get started.
Craig Crawford, "Countdown" contributor. Thanks for being us tonight, Craig.
