Onus on Mitt Romney as Republicans meet for Florida debate

For Mitt Romney, job one in tonight’s televised debate (NBC , 9 p.m. EST) will be to, somehow, slow the free-fall of his presidential candidacy. If he can’t, last weekend’s South Carolina rout at the hands of Newt Gingrich might only have been the start of something far worse for the former Republican front-runner.

At the moment, it’s likely that Romney hasn’t hit bottom. Perhaps more troubling from the Romney camp’s point of view: It isn’t clear exactly where the bottom might be.

Regardless of how well Romney performs this evening, he’s still got to face Tuesday — his personal “tax day” -- when he’ll finally release his 2010 income tax return. It figures to be another down day for his campaign, which has had more than its share in recent days.

Romney stubbornly refused to take his tax medicine earlier, ignoring a public call by one of his shrewdest and most prominent supporters, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, to get the facts out. Now, he’s moving in that direction, but the stakes are far higher and his candidacy is in much worse shape.

Even if there are no surprises in his disclosure -- a big if -- there will be the predictable orgy of damaging publicity: an excruciating dissection of his fortune ($190 million to $250 million, by his estimate), the seeming unfairness of his tax rate (lower than what most middle-class taxpayers pay), a recycling of his rich history of out-of-touch comments about money (like cluelessly referring to his $374,000 in speaking fees as “not very much” dough). And that’s just what the media are likely to do to him. Democrats and his Republican opponents will be more than happy to pile on.

If Romney is lucky, the tax story will start to fade, with the primary a week away, though it’s hard to see that happening quickly. There will be another debate on Thursday, where the topic will almost certainly arise. The issue plays right into the politics of resentment that Gingrich has been playing so deftly, rallying Republicans of more modest means against Romney’s upscale set, while accusing him of practicing a perverse brand of capitalism.

All of this comes at a particularly treacherous time in the 2012 race for Romney. He is still feeling the aftereffects of a double-digit loss in South Carolina, a margin that even many dedicated Gingrich backers didn’t see coming. The polling bounce that Gingrich earned as a result of his first primary win will dissipate gradually over the next week, if history is any guide.

At the moment, though, Gingrich is flying high. Gallup’s national tracking poll, a rolling five-day average, has Romney and Gingrich statistically tied (29% to 28%). Those lines could well cross in the next couple of days, with Gingrich pulling ahead, creating a bandwagon effect that could feed on itself. A pair of Florida robopolls, including a one-day Rasmussen survey conducted Sunday night, showed Gingrich leading Romney by 9 points. One may quibble with the methodology and reliability of the data, but the trend seems hard to dismiss.

Romney has owned the airwaves in Florida for weeks. His “super PAC” -- the attack operation run by his supporters and former aides and funded, at least in part, by wealthy donors who got a personal pitch from Romney himself -- dumped millions of dollars worth of unanswered anti-Gingrich ads onto Florida TV. If the South Carolina quake — and the enormous wave of publicity that followed — have washed all that away, the implications for Romney are ominous.

Just a week ago, Romney led by 24 points in Florida, and another reversal is certainly possible. Many voters say they could change their minds. Romney may yet pull out a victory and get his candidacy back on track.

But on the basis of what’s happening now, his supporters have ample reason to worry.

Romney has been particularly ineffective in the last couple of debates, and he’s looked less than sure-footed in recent TV appearances. More than at any point in the campaign, he’ll be going head-to-head with Gingrich, a debate virtuoso who has repeatedly turned the long series of nationally televised forums to his advantage.

The Romney campaign has brought in a new, highly skilled debate coach, Brett O’Donnell, who worked with John McCain last time. And Romney has signaled over the last 24 hours that he’ll go full-bore after Gingrich, on character and other questions, when the lights are turned on Monday night.

There’s more than a little risk in that. He will be attacking the GOP’s best gut-fighter of this generation. And if Gingrich gives as good as he gets, it will only reinforce his biggest selling point with Republican primary voters -- that he’s the toughest hombre that the party can field against President Obama in the fall debates. For many Republican voters, defeating Obama is the most important issue in the campaign, and emotions often sway primaries.

The best way for Romney to trigger his comeback would be to undermine Gingrich’s strongest asset by knocking him down in Monday night’s debate. Doing that, however, may not be in the former Massachusetts governor’s repertoire.