They said it couldn’t be done. The Republican party would never nominate a mormon flip-flopper from Massachusetts, one of the weakest front-runners in recent history.
But with a sweep in Texas tonight, Mitt Romney has secured enough pledged delegates to win the Republican nomination for President on the first ballot this August at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.
Romney said upon clinching the nomination:
“I am honored that Americans across the country have given their support to my candidacy and I am humbled to have won enough delegates to become the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee. Our party has come together with the goal of putting the failures of the last three and a half years behind us. I have no illusions about the difficulties of the task before us. But whatever challenges lie ahead, we will settle for nothing less than getting America back on the path to full employment and prosperity. On November 6, I am confident that we will unite as a country and begin the hard work of fulfilling the American promise and restoring our country to greatness.”
Despite the months of press salivation over the idea of a brokered convention, and despite the quixotic attempts of Ron Paul supporters around the country, Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee this fall. All of the fears that Republicans would continue the damaging in-fighting that plagued the primary campaign in January and February have proven unfounded.
Bearing Drift jumped out early and endorsed Romney in January, months before it became apparent that he would be the nominee and we were severely criticized for it – even being accused of having our endorsement bought by the Romney campaign. But the reality was much easier to understand – we recognized that he is the best candidate to run against Obama, and that was a realization made by the Republican primary electorate, too. And he even had room to spare, with 334 delegates left to be allocated by primaries in California, New Jersey and Utah, among others.
Now that Romney has clinched, we can finally put to bed any questions about whether he could/would/should be our nominee and we can focus solely on the general election.
I, for one, am glad to finally put this race to bed.
