After last week's defeat in South Carolina, Mitt Romney has come out swinging against Newt Gingrich in Florida, as Romney used a Monday night debate to blast Gingrich as an "influence peddler" and "failed leader."
The attacks - which Gingrich tried to shrug off a number of times - come as a series of new polls show Gingrich in the lead in Florida, another huge turnaround in the polls in this Republican race for the White House.
Three polls on Monday showed Gingrich with leads of 5, 8 and 9 points in Florida. Two of the polls could be compared to other surveys done by the same organization earlier in January, which demonstrated the volatility of this race.
Public Policy Polling one week ago had a poll showing Romney up by 15 points over Gingrich - now Gingrich is leading Romney by 5 points - a 20 point swing in 7 days.
Rasmussen had a poll up less than two weeks ago that had Romney ahead by 22 points over Gingrich - now Gingrich leads Romney by 9 points - a 31 point swing.
As polling experts can testify, these types of swings are almost unheard of in a Presidential race; it again demonstrates the importance of momentum this year.
Right now, Gingrich has that, but it will be interesting to see if Romney's attacks on Gingrich can blunt that. Romney was much more aggressive in the debate than last week in South Carolina; Gingrich did not come close to his magic moments of last week in the two South Carolina debates, instead trying to portray Romney as the overly aggressive and desperate debate foe.
Where does this leave us with a week to go until the Florida Primary? It all depends if you think that Romney's line of attack can change the trajectory of this race.
If so, then he has the chance to swing this race back in his direction over the next week. If not, then Gingrich has the chance to win an upset that few could have predicted just a few days ago.
As for the other two candidates, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul suffered from a lack of questions directed at them in the debate, as most of the queries were aimed at the top two - Romney and Gingrich.
At one point early on, it almost seemed like the NBC debate had become a Gingrich-Romney forum.
Santorum used his time to rail against both of the frontrunners, arguing that they were no different than President Obama on some key issues.
"Santorum rises above the bickering," said a press release issued by his campaign after the debate.
Ron Paul meanwhile had a night much like last week's debates in South Carolina where he made no mistakes, got in some decent points, but didn't really move the Political Richter Scale.
His campaign has also made it clear that he won't be spending much time campaigning in Florida, and will instead jump ahead to Nevada and Colorado to campaign for their caucuses.
There is another debate on Thursday night in Jacksonville, and then a four week break on the GOP debate schedule.
