TAMPA, Fla. – Newt Gingrich will take any help he can get.

So he was delighted when a friendly member of the crowd in an airport hangar handed up a poster with artist’s renderings of his Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama next to each other with the slogan, “Make no mistake, Obamacare is Romneycare.”

Gingrich, the former U.S. House Speaker from Georgia, signed the poster and directed a staff member to help the fan put it online to be reproduced.

“I love creativity,” he said. “This is another difference between Romney and me. I love people power, not money power.”

Bomb-throwing underdog Newt Gingrich has emerged yet again ahead of Tuesday’s Florida primary, leaving behind a brief flirtation with front-runner status after his victory in South Carolina.

Gingrich’s eight days in the Sunshine State have seen his poll numbers crash under Romney’s money power – the Associated Press reported that Romney and an allied Super PAC outspent Gingrich and his Super PAC 4 to 1 on the Florida airwaves, the Associated Press reports -- and a pair of his own weak debate performances. He jetted all across the state Monday to rally supporters in crowds numbering in the hundreds, his scalding anti-Romney rhetoric in tow.

In recent days Gingrich has gone from characterizing Romney as a “moderate” to calling him “liberal,” and from knocking his downsizing at Bain Capital to criticizing his investments in Goldman Sachs, which bet heavily on the collapse of the mortgage industry.

On Monday, Gingrich seized upon a New York Post report that Romney had vetoed a bill to give an extra $600,000 for kosher meals for Jewish nursing home residents on Medicaid. In Florida, senior citizens and Jews are large voting blocs.

“For $5 a day he said, ‘You can’t follow your religious prescription,’" Gingrich said. “Now, I think we need to have a government that respects our religions. I’m a little bit tired of being lectured about respecting every other religion on the planet. I’d like to respect our religion.”

Gingrich never mentioned Romney’s Mormon faith, which makes some evangelical voters uneasy, but there was plenty of other ammunition at the ready. The campaign launched TalesofMitt.com on Monday morning to highlight Romney’s contradictory statements in Thursday night’s debate that Gingrich also pointed out in a newly released television advertisement.

But that ad is airing only lightly in Florida’s 10 media markets, while Romney has made the airwaves his personal domain.

“What people don’t realize in these states is that when these ads run, they are the first time people see these things,” said Matt Towery, an Atlanta-based pollster for InsiderAdvantage and former Gingrich aide. “They go from having the national view of Newt Gingrich to the image that’s painted by Romney.”

That image is heavy on controversies involving Gingrich’s consulting work for Freddie Mac and an ethics investigation when he was in Congress, and offered in ways Gingrich claims are misleading. Gingrich said he never lobbied for Freddie Mac and he warned against their lending practices; he also was cleared of all of the ethics charges except for one count of submitting false information to the House Ethics Committee, which he blamed on his attorney.

Romney renewed attacks on his rival as an untrustworthy, Washington influence peddler at the outset of two separate appearances Monday, touching again on Gingrich's work for Freddie Mac.

"He made $1.6 million in his company, the very institution that helped stand behind the huge housing crisis here in Florida," Romney said in Dunedin.

Also in the past week a handful of GOP figures from the 1980s, coaxed by the Romney campaign, have been accusing Gingrich of inflating his role with Ronald Reagan and drawing attention to the times when Gingrich, in his typically cutting way, criticized Reagan.

Gingrich – who liberally peppers his speeches with Reagan anecdotes and references – scoffed at the notion that he was not a Reagan acolyte. He brought President Ronald Reagan’s son Michael Reagan along on the trail Monday to prove his bona fides.

“I figured if his son was prepared to campaign with me, for any person with an open mind that should settle that issue totally once and for all,” Gingrich said at a morning stop in Jacksonville.

Michael Reagan, a radio host, enthusiastically endorsed Gingrich and characterized the race as one between “Rockefeller Republicans” and “Reagan conservative Republicans.”

Michael Reagan drew cheers, but they were dwarfed in Tampa by roars for Stockbridge businessman Herman Cain, a former presidential contender who endorsed Gingrich on Saturday night.

“You know if I didn’t know better, one could get the impression that you all like me,” he said to a large cheer.”But even better – I like Newt Gingrich for President of the United States.”

Cain is launching a bus tour to promote his 9-9-9 tax plan and his chief of staff, Mark Block, said he is unsure how much more campaigning he will do for Gingrich because the "aggressive" tour schedule does not always coincide with the GOP primary schedule.

In Tampa Cain pressed the notion that Gingrich was ready to spring an upset in Florida.

“One of the other questions that you know I often get concerns, ‘Well you know Newt is behind in the polls in Florida. He’s in trouble. Does that concern you?’” Cain said, mocking the questions he gets in interviews. “My response was, ‘He was behind in South Carolina. How’s that working out for you?’”

But the Gingrich campaign was preparing for a sizable loss Tuesday. Several polls taken over the weekend showed him trailing Romney by double digits.

Nonetheless, Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said, “We’ve done everything we wanted to do coming out of New Hampshire. We made it a two man race. We didn’t think we’d expose Mitt Romney as a habitual liar. That’s kind of a bonus.”

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul remain in the race, but they have departed Florida – which awards all 50 of its convention delegates to the winner – to campaign in forthcoming caucus states. Gingrich plans to fly directly from his Orlando primary night party to Nevada, which holds its caucus on Saturday.

He crisscrossed Florida airspace Monday in a whirlwind fly-around took Gingrich to the Jacksonville, Pensacola, Tampa, Ft. Myers and Orlando areas.

In Orlando, at the day's final stop, Gingrich cited a recent interview with billionaire George Soros, a major backer of liberal causes, who said there would not be "all that much difference" between Romney and Obama. Gingrich seemed to wear Soros' criticism of him as an "extremist conservative" as a badge of honor.

And, of course, it gave him a new idea for an attack.

"We're thinking of a poster," Gingrich said. "The George Soros candidates: Romney and Obama."