Republican Mitt Romney trained his sights on President Barack Obama Wednesday after a triple primary win that put him in a commanding position to take the party's presidential nomination. Romney thumped main rival Rick Santorum in Maryland and the US capital Washington on Tuesday, and won a tighter but more important race in Wisconsin, US media projected, in a pivotal night for the party's frontrunner.
"We won them all! This really has been quite a night," Romney told supporters in Wisconsin, where he won by nearly five percentage points. Vowing to fight on, Santorum travelled to his home state of Pennsylvania to campaign for the next Republican primary later this month.
"The clock starts tonight," Santorum told supporters in his home state of Pennsylvania, which votes later among a slew of other East Coast states on April 24. "We've got three weeks to go out here in Pennsylvania and win this state. And after winning this state, the field looks a little different in May," he said, referring to upcoming votes in more conservative states such as Texas.
But with delegates piling up in Romney's column, the electoral math told a different story, one of rapidly diminishing prospects for a Santorum candidacy despite strong support from religious conservatives. Romney has 652 delegates after Tuesday's primaries, well over half the 1,144 needed to be crowned the Republican flag-bearer at the party's national convention in Tampa, Florida in August.
With that momentum, Romney has sought to turn his full attention to Obama, and the November presidential elections. He was scheduled to address an annual meeting of newspaper editors in Washington on Wednesday. He is already acting like the nominee, training his political fire on Obama's "government-centred society" and no longer mentioning his Republican rivals on the campaign trail.
Obama also has moved into campaign mode, rebuking Romney by name in a speech Tuesday, calling him to account for supporting a "radical" budget passed by congressional conservatives last week and accusing him of "social Darwinism." Romney fired back on the radio show of conservative host Sean Hannity.
"There's no question that under this president, this recovery has been the most tepid, the most weak, the most painful since the beginning of our recorded economic history," he said. Romney must still overcome skepticism from conservatives, who fear the ex-governor of liberal Massachusetts will tack to the left once he wins the nomination in order to appeal to the all-important independents.
"He now is halfway to the nomination, but only halfway," said Steffen Schmidt, a political scientist at Iowa State University. "He is the inevitable nominee, still tortured by the other three contenders in the GOP." "There are still too many 'Anybody but Romney' Republicans so it will be a big effort to bring them on board," he said. Santorum, a Christian conservative and staunch opponent of abortion and gay marriage, virtually ignored Tuesday's contests in Maryland and the District of Columbia, to concentrate on the important midwestern state of Wisconsin.
But with nearly 100 percent of precincts reporting, Romney had 43 percent of the vote to Santorum's 38 percent. Romney won 49 percent to Santorum's 29 percent in Maryland and dominated with 70 percent in Washington, DC, with former House speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas congressman Ron Paul trailing far behind in all three contests. "Let's face it. Mitt Romney is going to be the nominee," said prominent Romney supporter Tim Pawlenty, a former Minnesota governor.
Romney has now won 24 out of 37 contests and amassed some 625 delegates of the 1,144 needed, according to a tally by website RealClearPolitics. Santorum has racked up 11 victories and has well under half Romney's delegate count.
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