New national polls show President losing ground now in statistical dead heat with Romney
Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON D.C. It should become official Tuesday when Texas voters are expected to push Romney over the finish line in the delegate race. With Tuesdays Texas primary he is poised to secure
the 1144 delegates required to clinch the Republican presidential nomination at the partys August convention.
For so long he was the putative front-runner the nominal front-runner the weak front-runner. Then he became the all-but-certain nominee.
On the day he is expected to clinch the GOP presidential nomination with a win in the Texas primary Mitt Romney spent Tuesday morning campaigning in Colorado.
And by Tuesday night hell be able to ditch those modifiers. Mitt Romney is about to do what his father didnt and no one in his church ever has.
And with that the Republican Party will have selected an unlikely standard-bearer for 2012: a New Englander in a party rooted in the South; a man of moderate temperament in a party fueled by hot rhetoric; a Mormon in a party guided by evangelical Christians; a flip-flopper in a party that demands ideological purity.
Never mind that hes been the frontrunner since the Iowa and New Hampshire contests in January and the presumptive nominee since his last major opponent former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum suspended campaigning on April 10.
Even so I need to get 50.1 percent or more Romney said ahead of the Tuesday GOP primary in Texas expected to push him above the required 1144 delegate threshold.
Im looking forward to good news he said.
He still wont formally be nominated for another three months. That comes in late August at the Republican convention in Tampa. All before the general election campaign which has for practical purposes been going on for months can officially begin.
Romney was courting another set of numbers voters and dollars at campaign stops Tuesday in Colorado and Nevada including a Las Vegas rally and fundraiser with Donald Trump.
Meanwhile other significant numbers percentages in new national polls show President Barack Obama has been losing ground to Romney with the race now essentially a statistical dead heat.
It seems like forever ago that Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich were waving Etch a Sketches at their rallies in a last-ditch bid to stop Romneys march to the nomination. The long slog of primaries effectively ended on April 3 with Romneys victory in Wisconsin. Three weeks after that the former Massachusetts governor returned to New Hampshire where he launched his campaign on a windswept farm one year ago this week to claim the mantle of nominee.
So it was that nobody anointed Romney. There was the humbling tumult of South Carolina where a resurgent Gingrich threw him off balance; where he stammered on the debate stage trying to explain his taxes; where one rally crowd was so meager about 80 people in a cavernous convention hall that he reached for excuses Gosh this is a workday right?"
On the day South Carolinians voted Romney in his mind already defeated found order in a simple chore: He fed quarters into a washer and dryer in the Columbia Marriotts guest laundry room.
He came back 10 days later in Florida going on the warpath to eviscerate Gingrich only to step on his own momentum the morning after his victory by saying Im not concerned about the very poor."
A formidable adversary
After a year of criticism that he didnt have the strength or shrewdness to take on President Obama Romney has emerged from the bruising primary as a formidable adversary. With the race firmly in general-election mode he is a more disciplined campaigner than he was a few months ago and has
pulled even with Obama in many national and swing-state polls.
However reluctantly they may have settled on Romney most Republicans are now rallying behind him. On Monday about 5000 people
one of the largest crowds of his campaign turned out to see him pay tribute to veterans in San Diego.
Romney started sensing that enthusiasm on a cold morning three days after Christmas. He awoke in Muscatine Iowa and headed to a coffee shop for a quick campaign stop. It was before dawn but his supporters had filled the cafe snaked down a hallway and lined up in the street.
Romneys top strategist Stuart Stevens said he overheard a woman telling her child Were here to see the next president."
