A senior Republican on Sunday pushed the “overwhelming” case for Mitt Romney to be crowned the party’s presidential nominee, but the frontrunner’s main rival Rick Santorum vowed to fight on.
The White House also signaled that it sees Romney as the likely Republican challenger to President Barack Obama in November, with Vice President Joe Biden attacking the former Massachusetts governor in a television interview.
Three months into a bitterly fought race for the nomination, Romney has a strong lead and polls suggest he will win three more primaries on Tuesday — in Wisconsin, Maryland and the US capital Washington. “He’s going to be an excellent candidate, and I think the chances are overwhelming that he will be our nominee,” said Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate. “It seems to me we’re in the final phases of wrapping up this nomination.”
McConnell did not explicitly endorse Romney but suggested that the party should follow the lead of former president George H.W. Bush and Congressman Paul Ryan, a leading Republican and representative for Wisconsin, who did. “It’s absolutely apparent that it’s in the best interests of our party at this particular point to get behind the person who is obviously going to be our nominee,” McConnell said on CNN’s “State of the Union” show. “Most of the members of the Senate Republican conference are either supporting him, or they have the view that I do, that it’s time to turn our attention to the fall campaign and begin to make the case against the president of the United States.”
The Real Clear Politics website average poll had Romney, who has won 21 out of 34 nominating contests so far, leading Santorum 40 percent to 32.5 percent in Wisconsin.
But unless Romney can clinch the 1,144 delegates needed for the nomination — he currently has 565 — he could be forced to wait until late August to get the nod at the Republican party’s convention.
Santorum, who has racked up 11 victories but has less than half Romney’s number of all-important Republican delegates, said he was determined to fight on despite efforts to anoint his rival.