Mitch Perry
Florida will become ground zero for the GOP presidential campaign this weekend in Orlando, when the Republican Party of Florida kicks off it’s three-day Sunshine Summit with a speech by former Vice President Dick Cheney, followed by two days of speeches from 13 of the 15 candidates running for the nomination.
On Monday night however, the RPOF interrupted the plans of many reporters intending on covering Cheney’s speech, saying that there isn’t enough room at the Walt Disney Resort Hotel to accommodate the nearly 200 journalists requesting credentials to hear the former VP. Instead, there will be a pool report, with reporters from the AP, Washington Post and Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times becoming the eyes and ears for everyone else.
All eyes will certainly be on the two Florida homeboys, former Governor Jeb Bush and current U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, both about equal in the polls but considered to be going in opposite directions when it comes to the trajectory in the race.
For Bush, it’s another chance to regroup before his home state followers, following his full day stop of Florida locations last week on his “Jeb can fix it” tour. Although Jeb backers insist it’s way too early in the cycle to start panicking, the fact is that the campaign is not where they thought they’d be some 13 months ago when Bush became the first major candidate to say that he would explore the presidency.
Although Rubio is doing slightly better than Bush in most polls, he’s still relegated in third place at best in all of them, with a double-digit deficit to Donald Trump and Ben Carson. But it’s exactly because it’s Trump and Carson who lead Rubio that give many pundits the standing to say that they think that Rubio is ascendant. While he received rapturous reviews following the Boulder debate last month, there wasn’t much movement in the polls — but there was with the conventional wisdom crowd.
Trump has led in all Florida polls since early August, and in a recent one, he was leading Carson by 20 percentage points. Can the occasional Florida resident really beat out Bush and Rubio in their home state when Florida registered Republicans vote in the primary next March? It’d be a coup for Trump to score high marks in the Sunshine State this week.
Carson is coming off the most scrutinized week of his presidential candidacy, as he’s blasted the media for concocting lies when it comes to reviewing his comments about being accepted into West Point and whether or not he really was a violent kid growing up (or saved whites on the night that MLK was assassinated and revolution was in the air). The West Palm Beach resident is scheduled to close out the list of GOP speakers on Friday.
Rubio, Bush and Trump will join Carson on Fridays’ agenda, along with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
On Saturday, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Carly Fiorina of California will speak.
