Florida Primary Winner: ‘War on Religion’ Talking Point
Newt Gingrich staked his campaign on being the candidate who will restore American exceptionalism—Christian American exceptionalism, that is—and who will fight back against President Obama’s supposed “war on religion.” But Mitt Romney’s blowout showed just how limited Gingrich’s appeal is, even among Republicans.
That was the good news for Mitt Romney. But it’s also tonight’s bad news for the frontrunner because he’ll need those voters, the recruits to the Gingrichian army who think they’re saving America from Barack Obama’s “war on religion,” to win a state like Florida in November. Those voters heard from Gingrich that Romney, like Obama, engaged in a war on religion by depriving elderly Jewish nursing home residents their kosher meals.
Mind you, for Gingrich’s last, desperate stand, it seemed a long shot that many Republican voters in Florida would care that in the course of cutting the Medicaid budget (something they of course love), some Jews in Massachusetts had to have kosher meals brought in rather than prepared in their nursing homes. If anything, this was probably more of an oy gevalt moment for Gingrich, who, after making the claim on the campaign trail, subsequently denied knowing that his campaign dispatched a robocall claiming Romney “forced” Holocaust survivors to “eat non-kosher.”