Caxambas Republican Club: Don Farmer analyzes Florida primary for Marco Island GOP group

“Elephants don’t forget,” said the flyer for the Caxambas Republican Club (CRC) monthly meeting, but they are being urged to do just that. At the group’s get-together at the Rose History Auditorium on Wednesday evening, members were reminded that, for their organization, the big goal is to deny Barack Obama a second term in the White House, and that will require supporters of the various candidates to bury their differences and unite behind the eventual nominee.

It could be a protracted fight before that person, widely expected to be former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, is able to claim the mantle, said Naples Daily News/Marco Eagle columnist and former network news anchor Don Farmer, who provided the gathering with a post-mortem of the previous day’s Republican Presidential primary in Florida.

“It takes 1,144 delegates to win” the nomination, said Farmer. If Romney wins every one up for grabs between now and the end of April – and many of those contests award delegates proportionally, unlike winner-take-all Florida – he still won’t have enough votes to clinch the nomination.

“Sometimes, the electoral process gives you some interesting people, and you have to pick among them,” said Farmer, as if to remind the group that, no, you can’t cast your vote for Ronald Reagan. He joked that after the last Republican Presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich was wandering his hotel looking for Wolf Blitzer, wanting one more media representative to beat up on, and Mitt Romney was looking for “someone to give him the second verse of ‘God Bless America.’ ”

Farmer said he didn’t think the intramural mudslinging would hurt the GOP’s chances in the general election, although it will certainly provide some soundbites for Democratic attack ads. The lengthy series of debates and the contenders’ jabs at each other were “just politics,” he said. “We all have short memories.” The infighting and the debates provided some useful outcomes, as well.

“They certainly made Mitt a better debater” than when he started, said Farmer, and exposed Texas governor Rick Perry’s weakness in that arena. Print, broadcast and network newsman Farmer engaged in a little media bashing of his own, saying that because of the “left-leaning” press, “one party has to go 110 yards to win,” a timely metaphor during Super Bowl week.

That not all were ready to forgive and forget was clear when one questioner asked whether the “fanatical, maniacal” Ron Paul supporters would be ready to make nice.

The CRC also heard from two Republican congressional candidates, each hoping to take the seat Connie Mack is vacating for his run for the U.S. Senate. Chauncey Goss was a return visitor to the club, having addressed them in September, before he was a declared candidate.

He is running for the seat “held by Connie Mack, and my father before that, and his father before that,” he told the club. “Our problem is simple – we spend too much.”

The second candidate to speak, Trey Radel, agreed.

“Cut spending in Washington right now,” he urged, drawing applause. Many in the audience would recognize him, he said, from his broadcasts on WINK news. “I was the idiot standing in the hurricane.” He invited the entire gathering, approximately 75 people, to stop by the Marco Polo for a drink after the meeting.

The next CRC event on tap is a social meeting, on Wednesday, February 22 at CJ’s on the Bay.