I watched the debate highlights. Yes Mitt got the better of Newt. And, Yes Mitt got the lion's share of applause. But the real reason Mitt had all that applause was because the audience was artificially stacked/packed in Romney's favor.
I have no doubt that the Florida GOP, in its immense panic over a possible Gingrich win here, went through extraordinary machinations to get all the Rubio-bots and Scott-bots tickets to tonight's event. This is of course in the grand tradition of the infamous Miami-Dade rent-a-riot during the 2000 recount battle. The Florida Republican machine is a well-oiled one.
and what is my speculation based upon?
Mittens himself (at :08) :
"It was a big night for me... you saw the response here in this audience"
I have no doubt Romney was told of this ahead of time, and that of course helped his confidence, and he was confident. Conversely, Gingrich couldn't handle this turn of events from South Carolina, and that also showed. In summation, I really don't think Mitten's performance was anything stellar. His inability to identify one of his own ads was quite remarkably dumb. And he was so smarmily comfortable with conditions that he made the unbelievable gaffe of joking "you're fired"! Similarly, there was his truly obnoxious slighting of Ron Paul where Wolfe even prompted him to respond to Paul's remarks, and Mitt simply forged ahead: "I'm talking about President Obama here".
Romney reeked of entitlement tonight, I wonder how more objective Floridians saw it.