Romney, Obama are on collision course

We enjoyed an astounding moment of political theater of the absurd Tuesday when former House Speaker Newt Gingrich proclaimed victory after being trounced by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the winner-take-all Florida primary.

A fellow Foreign Service retiree put it this way in an email: "Newt expressed his 'most sincere' gratitude to the voters of Florida, who had just foreclosed virtually any chance he had of getting the (Republican) nomination."

On Saturday, the Nevada GOP caucuses handed Gingrich another setback by giving Romney a rather decisive victory.

Apparently, Nevada Republicans didn't buy Gingrich's "outsider" pitch, recognizing that the former speaker is a longtime Washington insider who earned $1.6 million by peddling influence for mortgage giant Freddie Mac, which is responsible for thousands of home foreclosures in Nevada.

Although Gingrich's outsized ego precludes him from admitting defeat, his campaign is all but over, and the more moderate, and more modest, Romney is virtually certain to be the 2012 GOP candidate for president. Early primaries and caucuses have made it clear that most Republicans, and many independent (like me) voters, think Romney has a much better chance of defeating President Barack Obama in November than do any of his remaining GOP rivals: Gingrich, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul.

It's instructive to take another look at the Florida primary. For starters, Florida, with Hispanics comprising about 15 percent of the electorate, is much more diverse than other early primary states. And its Hispanic voters are mostly conservative Cuban-Americans rather than more liberal Mexican-Americans, who predominate in Nevada and many other states. South Florida Cubans are an important voting bloc for Republicans in a key Southern swing state, and that's the reason newly minted U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Tea Party favorite, is being prominently mentioned as a possible vice presidential nominee on the Republican ticket.

Personally, I think a Romney-Rubio ticket would give the GOP its best chance of denying a second term to President Obama. Romney, a successful businessman, would hold his own in an economic policy debate against our community organizer/president, and the fresh-faced Rubio would run circles around Vice President Joe Biden, a career Washington politician.

In a recent Huffington Post column, Ediberto Roman, a Florida International University law professor, explained why Rubio is such an impressive young politician. "(Rubio) noted that the Republican Party cannot continue to use hateful rhetoric to address immigration," Roman wrote, "(and) called for his party to not be the illegal immigration party, but the pro-legal immigration party." That statement was greeted with loud applause before a largely Hispanic audience in South Florida.

Rubio also opposed the so-called DREAM Act because it would deliver millions of taxpayer dollars to illegal immigrants. And finally, he condemned Gingrich for labeling Romney as "anti-immigrant," calling Newt's language "inaccurate and inflammatory," which it was.

Well, political junkie that I am, I look forward to a spirited contest between President Obama and ex-Gov. Romney this fall. May the best qualified candidate win.

• Guy W. Farmer, of Carson City, is the Nevada Appeal's senior political columnist.