Gillespie Strategies

Republican political strategist and former White House counselor Ed Gillespie tells Newsmax that it would be a mistake to discount a Florida surprise in Tuesday’s primary battle and that the race is still too fluid to call.

“The polls are fluid and I don’t discount anyone’s chance to come out on top until voter’s vote,” Gillespie said in an exclusive interview with Newsmax on Monday. “You know that’s one of the things I think that people need to respect the process and respect the voters. And there have been surprises all along the way, and we’ll just see what happens in Florida, but I wouldn’t right now say anybody’s out of the question.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has been up and down in the polls, says he plans to press on regardless of Tuesday’s outcome.

Gillespie said, “I don’t believe that Florida is going to end the race one way or another. If Gov. Romney wins in Florida, he’ll cement his front-runner status but I don’t think it will be over by any stretch of the imagination at that point.”

Gillespie, who was the first chairman of the Republican National Committee to preside over a clean sweep of the White House and both houses of Congress, said he does not believe that Gingrich necessarily must achieve a minimum threshold in Florida following his stunning come-from-behind victory in South Carolina.

“A lot of the conventional wisdom about these things has kind of been thrown out the window in this election cycle and analysts will be poring over it and looking at the margin and where people got their votes and that kind of thing,” said Gillespie, who was counselor to the president during the George W. Bush administration.

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“I’m not sure there is — given the nature of the schedule and kind of lull that is February —that there is a minimum that the speaker needs to get to maintain his campaign.”

Although Romney and a pro-Romney super PAC clearly have outspent Gingrich in Florida, Gillespie said he does not have enough information to determine whether negative advertising is responsible for Romney’s recent rise in the polls.

“There’s a lot of negative ads and negative comments in the debates and on the trail,” said Gillespie, who authored “Winning Right: Campaign Politics and Conservative Policies” in 2006. “That’s the nature of a primary. You are trying to highlight differences and elevate why you would be a better nominee then the other person.

As policy and communications director for the House Republican Conference, Gillespie was a principal drafter of the Contract with America — the 1994 campaign platform that helped the GOP gain control of the House for the first time in 40 years.

Although this nomination battle has clearly broken Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment, "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican," Gillespie is not concerned that President Barack Obama will be the ultimate beneficiary.

“It’s not much fun to watch or pleasant to watch. I understand it’s the nature of the process,” Gillespie said. “I think at the end of the day, President Obama is going to lose his re-election bid because of his policies, and the effects of those policies. Once we have a nominee, the nominee will be focused on those things — not like I say, the contrast between Republican candidates. I guess the way I’d put it is, I’m looking forward to that part of the campaign.”

Gillespie dismissed Obama’s apparent campaign strategy of blaming Congress for his lack of progress in solving America’s problems and he accused the president of simply abandoning government to campaign.

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“To hear him talking about the problems with Washington and the lack of solutions coming out of Washington it’s like the last three years were a gap on his resume,” Gillespie insisted.

“You’d think maybe he was backpacking through Europe or something. I mean the fact is the reason that the economy is in such bad shape — and people are dissatisfied with the direction of the country and don’t approve of his job performance— is because of his policies and those policies were enacted when he had a Democratic House and Democratic Senate for two years.”

The president will have to make his case directly to the American people as to why he favors more government, higher spending and more taxes, Gillespie said.

“The president of the United States is supposed to provide leadership, not complain about it. And that’s all he does,” he said.

Although Gov. Romney and Speaker Gingrich have attempted to portray each other as less than conservative on certain issues, Gillespie said the differences are magnified in the heat of the campaign.

“In terms of the policies they embrace, and where they want to take the country, they are both in the mold of traditional conservatives who want to have lower taxes, less regulation, less government spending, and repeal Obamacare,” he said. “Where the policy differences are not all that pronounced, the natural inclination for the campaigns is try to then pronounce the few differences there more loudly. I think we’re seeing that now. The decibel level is going up as these primaries are taking place.”

Gillespie cited rule changes by the Republican National Committee and the introduction of proportionate delegation allocations as reasons he anticipates a lengthy nomination process.

“That stretches it out. We’ve got still a field of four people vying and going forward. You know that’s likely to stretch it out as well,” he said. “It seems to me that it’s not going to be until springtime that we know who the Republican Party nominee is.”

Although Super PACs have played a role in other elections, this is the first time they’ve been a significant factor in a GOP presidential nomination battle.

“The super PACs on the conservative side had an impact on the last congressional election cycle and they’re having an impact now in the presidential cycle,” Gillespie said. “That’s the nature of the campaign finance system that we have today. Frankly, Republicans and conservatives were a little late adapting to it.”

He believes that the Republican nominee ultimately will be better equipped to take on President Obama for having gone through such a tempestuous nomination process.

“I believe whomever captures the Republican Party’s nomination and wins after what is clearly a very competitive contest for that nomination — vigorous debates and lots of back and forth, and having to be very steeped in policy answers — will be in a very good position to beat president Obama in November, and I think whoever emerges as the Republican nominee will beat president Obama in November.”