Palm trees…Warm weather…Eight handicapped parking spots in a row…All of them full.

Yes, that’s right — hello from beautiful, sunny Florida! I flew in to Fort Lauderdale this afternoon and thought I might even have a chance to walk barefoot on the sand and touch the Atlantic Ocean before hitting my first campaign event. Alas, the traffic on I-95 convinced me otherwise – fortunately keeping my mind on the task at hand.

So I’m about half an hour early to Mitt Romney’s pre-debate rally, at Bogart’s restaurant in Boca Raton. The jumbo building doubles as a movie theater, and it looks something like a cheap roadside version of the Taj Mahal. The room for the rally — way too small — is slowly filling up with Floridians, the best-dressed among them wearing loafers without socks.

The polls are telling a mixed story, but many of them show Romney taking a lead. Thompson’s exit is clearly helping him. McCain needs to cut into Rudy’s support, or he risks losing his advantage. More later, and then the debate…