Mitt Romney‘s campaign said Wednesday it would take “an act of God” for rivals to win the Republican presidential nomination, but the party is bracing for a rough, divisive fight well past Super Tuesday.
Romney collected six victories in the 10-state voting bonanza including Ohio, the pivotal battlefield which he won in a nailbiter against his most persistent challenger, Rick Santorum.
While Romney boosted his pole position in the race to become the Republican Party’s nominee against President Barack Obama in November, he failed to deal a knockout blow to Santorum, a religious conservative who held his own by winning three states across the Midwest and South, or to former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who won the southern state of Georgia.
But in the aftermath of Super Tuesday, team Romney was confident their candidate was marching inexorably toward the 1,144 delegates needed to ensure victory, with about 40 percent of the needed delegates in hand.
“All we have to do is keep doing what we‘re doing, and we can get the nomination,” a senior Romney campaign official said Wednesday as he broke down the results for reporters at Romney’s headquarters in Boston.
The former Massachusetts governor has fended off surges from several rivals in recent months, winning when it counted most in states like Florida and Ohio, even as he has struggled to connect with core conservatives.
The campaign official insisted that Romney‘s increased lead over his opponents and diminishing opportunities on the calendar for major delegate hauls, make a “clear case that the nomination is an impossibility for Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich.”
“For those guys, it’s going to take some sort of act of God to get to where they need to be on the nomination,” the official said.
Yet they remain in the race, denying Romney the opportunity to put a negative Republican campaign behind him and turn his attention to ousting Obama from the White House.
“I think the long slog continues for Mitt Romney towards the nomination,”
Dante Scala, a professor of politics at the University of New Hampshire, told AFP with the candidates now eyeing upcoming votes in March and into April.
Still, Super Tuesday left little doubt in analysts‘ minds that Romney will eventually secure the crown.
And despite being battered, millionaire businessman Romney, 64, can boast that he is a survivor, despite lingering skepticism among his party of his conservative credentials. He came from behind to win Florida and Ohio, two swing states that Republicans must win to claim the White House.
Romney’s Ohio win, narrow as it was, denied Santorum his central argument that he alone can compete against Obama in working-class, Midwestern swing states.
And opportunities for decisive delegate hauls have dwindled down to just two dates.
Five states vote on April 24, including New York and Santorum‘s native Pennsylvania, with a total of 231 delegates at stake, while June 5 has 299 delegates, including in voter-rich California.
The authoritative website Real Clear Politics put Romney’s current delegate count at 404, Santorum‘s at 161, Gingrich 105 and congressman Ron Paul 61.
Each state is allocated a certain number of delegates to the Republican Party’s summer convention which will crown the nominee, and those delegates are divided up among the winners of the state votes.
House Majority leader Eric Cantor said he believed Romney would earn the nomination.
“Mitt Romney did what he needed to do last night,” Cantor told Fox News on Wednesday.
“What we‘re beginning to see is people saying that jobs and the economy undoubtedly are the number one issue and we need Mitt Romney because he’s the only individual in the race who has a plan, a pro-growth bold plan to get the economy back on track and get jobs created again.”
Santorum, 53, a devout Roman Catholic who fiercely opposes abortion and gay marriage, has billed himself as the only authentic conservative in the race who understands working-class voters and can beat Obama in the fall.
“We have won in the West, the Midwest and the South and we‘re ready to win across this country,” Santorum told an ear-splitting rally Tuesday.
But his faith-based views have alienated some moderates, and after the Ohio setback serious questions will be asked about whether he can get elected.
Santorum was back on the campaign trail stumping in Kansas on Wednesday, before two rallies in Mississippi later in the day.
Romney has now won 14 states, Santorum seven and Gingrich two. But the next states in play could rob Romney of any forward movement.
Deeply-conservative Kansas votes on Saturday and the delegate-rich southern states of Alabama and Mississippi hold primaries Tuesday, all of which could prove a challenge to Romney, and hand victories to either Santorum or Gingrich. (AFP)
