ORLANDO, Fla. (MCT) — They worship at the political altar of Ronald Reagan, but Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney ignore one part of his creed: his so-called 11th Commandment forbidding criticism of fellow Republicans.
“Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican,” Reagan used to say.
This year’s two top GOP presidential candidates propose largely similar agendas: Cut taxes. Slash government spending and regulation. Repeal the new health care law.
Yet they’re locked in a blood feud that centers on personal history — charges that Gingrich is unethical and a political opportunist and that Romney is a flip-flopping liberal and a rich robber baron — rather than on differences over policy.
Their constant sniping at one another has some Republican voters worrying that it all will weaken the eventual winner heading into the fall campaign against President Barack Obama.
“Stay on subjects people want to hear,” James Siemund said this week at a Florida town hall meeting featuring John McCain acting as a surrogate for Romney. “We don’t want to hear the bashing.”
“It’s now mud wrestling, and that is not good,” said McCain, the senator from Arizona and his party’s 2008 presidential nominee. “It drives up the unfavorables and prevents all of them from being able to present their positive agenda for America.”
Both candidates have suffered in the eyes of voters.
The total of Florida voters with a favorable opinion of Gingrich dropped from 59 percent three weeks ago to 51 percent this week, according to polls by Quinnipiac University. At the same time, the ranks of Florida voters with an unfavorable opinion of him jumped from 29 percent to 42 percent.
