With a healthy lead in final polls the day before the Florida primary, Mitt Romney depicted chief rival Newt Gingrich on Monday as increasingly desperate in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Romney and Gingrich continued to cla

With a healthy lead in final polls the day before the Florida primary,
Mitt Romney depicted chief rival Newt Gingrich on Monday as
increasingly desperate in the race for the Republican presidential
nomination.

Romney and Gingrich continued to clash over the negative turn in the
campaign between the two front-runners, with Gingrich accusing Romney
of dishonesty but conceding that a wave of attack ads by the former
Massachusetts governor has been effective.

"Frankly if all that stuff were true I wouldn't vote for myself,"
Gingrich said in Jacksonville, Florida, on Monday, referring to what
he called "dishonest" Romney ads.

He later told a crowd in Pensacola that "we will only win if the
American people decide that they are sick and tired of the New York
and Washington establishment thinking that we are dumb enough to let
them try to buy an election by telling us things that we all know are
just plain not true."

Romney acknowledged the turn to the negative, telling NBC's "Today"
show that his campaign was forced to respond to a negative salvo by
Gingrich that helped the former House speaker win last week's South
Carolina primary.

"We were being whaled on by Speaker Gingrich and didn't respond well
in South Carolina," Romney said. "So we decided to respond. We made it
clear if people want change in Washington you have to bring in someone
from outside Washington. Both the change in tactic as well as the
message have had a real impact in Florida."

Later Monday, Romney told a crowd in Dunedin, Florida, that Gingrich's
attacks revealed a degree of desperation.