Pressure on Romney to deliver in final Florida GOP debate

The stakes couldn’t be much higher for Mitt Romney in Thursday night’s televised debate (CNN, 8 p.m. Eastern). It’s the final debate ahead of the pivotal Florida primary, and perhaps the last, best chance for the former Massachusetts governor to head off what is shaping up to be a prolonged, and debilitating, race for the nomination.

Polls show Romney in a virtual dead heat for the lead in Florida, the biggest primary test yet of 2012. Those numbers represent an uptick over his standing in recent opinion surveys, but he’s hardly home free. Romney still has some distance to go in reestablishing his primacy in Florida, and in the GOP contest.

Even though the onus Thursday night in Jacksonville will be on his main opponent, Romney cannot afford to take his foot off the gas. Republican voters have made it clear that they are looking for someone who can carry the conservative fight to President Obama, and do it in an effective, and even bruising, fashion. Last week, Romney failed that test, by comparison with Newt Gingrich.

Romney bounced back Monday in the most recent debate. That evening, the environment worked to Romney’s advantage, but he won’t have that edge again. Tonight will mark a return to the fight-night atmosphere that repeatedly put him at a disadvantage in South Carolina.

Audience members will be encouraged to vent their passions by CNN, which is producing the debate and has been eager to generate a reality-show air that keeps viewers tuned in (and has had a marked effect on the course of the GOP contest).

In the last debate, NBC asked people in the hall to refrain from cheering and clapping. The audience followed orders, to a large extent, and the result was a better night for Romney. In that more sedate setting, he managed to escaped invidious comparison with Gingrich, whose ability to rouse an audience hit new peaks in South Carolina.

Those cheers are still echoing in Romney’s ears, it seems. On Thursday morning, he tried to fire up supporters at a Jacksonville rally by urging them to make some noise on his behalf tonight. He told his backers he hoped they could make it to the debate, adding, “We’d love to see you there, cheering.”

Expect plenty of crowd noise from all sides at the University of North Florida debate. Romney will try to keep the pressure on Gingrich, as he did in the last debate. And if he stays on message, Romney will reel off lines that reinforce the words of his 30-second attack ads, which are peppering Florida voters every time they turn on a local channel or cable networks like Fox News.

Romney’s campaign and a separate committee run by his former aides have been waging a saturation advertising campaign against Gingrich’s conservative credentials. Upping the ante from earlier states, they’re going after the former congressman on his inflated claims about involvement in Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the earmarks he sought in the House and his work with Nancy Pelosi on climate change. His lucrative consulting contract with mortgage giant Freddie Mac, a major liability in a state with one of the highest home foreclosure rates in the country, will be another line of assault from Romney.

At the same time, Romney needs to avoid coming off as overly defensive or letting his opponents or moderator Wolf Blitzer get under his skin. Romney tends to come off as peevish, and appear haughty, when he’s challenged. Voters like to glimpse steel in a prospective president, but Romney continues to struggle to modulate his manner onstage.

He’ll inevitably find himself under attack again, too. There will be new questions stemming from the release of his tax returns, made public since the last debate, which focused attention as never before on his staggering personal wealth (estimated at between $190 million and $250 million) and tax breaks he employed to reduce what he owed.

More than in any previous primary contest, TV debates have played an out-sized role in determining the course of the 2012 campaign. They effectively ended the once-promising candidacy of Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, and they have boosted Romney and, perhaps even more, Gingrich.

Thursday night is the last scheduled debate for nearly a full month. The next one isn’t until Feb. 22, ahead of primaries the following week in Arizona and Michigan.

If Romney can avoid self-inflicted damage and go on to score a primary win next Tuesday, he’ll be back on track as his party’s pacesetter. If not, he’ll instead be a one-shot wonder — reduced to the status of a former front-runner, one with but a single win (in a next-door state, of all places) to show for all his efforts. Which is why the jousting in Jacksonville on Thursday evening could easily be the most important debate of the GOP campaign.

paul.west@latimes.com