Romney politely encourages rivals to fold

Loading …

DAVID ESPO

AP Spe­cial Correspondent

WASHINGTON — His del­e­gate lead grow­ing, Mitt Rom­ney gen­tly nudged his Repub­li­can oppo­nents toward the side­lines on Wednes­day and said he was on track to wrap up the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion before the party con­ven­tion next sum­mer. Rick San­to­rum and Newt Gin­grich paid him no mind, vow­ing to fight on in a cam­paign marked by per­sis­tent ide­o­log­i­cal divisions.

If any­thing, the polit­i­cal maneu­ver­ing inten­si­fied as the marathon pointed toward con­tests in five states over the next week. Romney’s cam­paign pur­chased tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing time in Alabama accord­ing to cam­paign sources, as it pur­sued a break­through in the party’s South­ern base.

A San­to­rum ally urged Gin­grich to aban­don the race.

In response, the for­mer House speaker said he would con­sider it — if he thought San­to­rum was sure to beat Rom­ney and then Pres­i­dent Barack Obama. “I don’t,” he added.

One day after Super Tues­day, Romney’s cam­paign cir­cu­lated a memo mak­ing the case that his six vic­to­ries on a sin­gle night had increased his del­e­gate lead to a point that it was increas­ingly hard for any of his rivals to catch up. And they were hurt­ing the party by con­tin­u­ing to try, it suggested.

“As Gov­er­nor Romney’s oppo­nents attempt to ignore the basic prin­ci­ples of math, the only person’s odds of win­ning they are increas­ing are Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s,” it said.

Rom­ney didn’t go that far in an inter­view, and he stopped short of a flat pre­dic­tion that he would achieve his goal of a pre-convention del­e­gate major­ity. “We think that will get done before the con­ven­tion, but one thing I can tell you for sure is there’s not going to be some bro­kered con­ven­tion where some new per­son comes in and becomes the nom­i­nee,” he said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” ”It’s going to be one of the four peo­ple that are still running.”

After Super Tues­day, Rom­ney has 419 del­e­gates over­all, more than his three rivals com­bined. San­to­rum is sec­ond with 178, Gin­grich has 107 and Paul has 47. It takes 1,144 to win the nomination.

While Rom­ney clearly would like all his oppo­nents to drop out, the depar­ture of just one — either San­to­rum or Gin­grich — might be less wel­come. The two often divide the anti-Romney vote and enable him to win con­tests he might oth­er­wise lose. In Ohio, the mar­quee matchup on Tues­day, Rom­ney edged San­to­rum by a lit­tle more than 10,000 votes out of 1.2 mil­lion cast. Gin­grich drew about 175,000 votes and Ron Paul 111,000.

Gin­grich and San­to­rum both argue that despite Romney’s finan­cial and orga­ni­za­tion advan­tages, he is a late­comer to con­ser­v­a­tive causes, plagued by incon­sis­ten­cies in his record and unable to artic­u­late sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences with Obama.

Ear­lier this week, Rom­ney abruptly aban­doned a posi­tion he has held since he ran for gov­er­nor to link increases in the fed­eral min­i­mum wage to rises in infla­tion. He had reaf­firmed it as recently as last month, telling reporters aboard his cam­paign jet, “I haven’t changed my thoughts on that.” But San­to­rum and Gin­grich hold oppos­ing views, as do Repub­li­can busi­ness allies, and on Tues­day, Rom­ney said on CNBC, “There’s prob­a­bly not a need to raise the min­i­mum wage.”

In a post-Super Tues­day inter­view, Rom­ney also said there is no cur­rent way of prov­ing that his pro­posed tax cuts wouldn’t raise the deficits, “because those kind of details have to be worked out with Con­gress and we have a wide array of options.”

He has called for a 20 per­cent reduc­tion across the board in per­sonal income tax rates, and says he will rec­om­mend curb­ing some of the exist­ing tax breaks that wealth­ier tax­pay­ers cur­rently enjoy. Asked what level of income would qual­ify as wealthy, he sidestepped.

“What I’ll look at is the var­i­ous cohorts, the top 5%, the top 10%, the top 25%, we’ll look across the code at the var­i­ous cat­e­gories and see if they’re con­tin­u­ing to pay the approx­i­mate share that they’ve paid in the past under the cur­rent sys­tem,” he said.

“It’s impor­tant that the great major­ity of Amer­i­cans don’t see an increase in their tax share,” he added.

Rom­ney spent the day in Mass­a­chu­setts after sleep­ing at home for the first time in weeks, a result of a nom­i­nat­ing cam­paign that has gone on longer than any in recent years.

San­to­rum cam­paigned in Kansas, which holds cau­cuses next Sat­ur­day with 40 del­e­gates at stake. Wyoming, with 12 del­e­gates, is also on the cal­en­dar, as are the Vir­gin Islands, Guam and the North­ern Mar­i­anna Islands, with 6 apiece.

The for­mer Penn­syl­va­nia sen­a­tor won three Super Tues­day states, reviv­ing his cam­paign after a recent string of set­backs, and he issued a fresh appeal for cam­paign funds to com­pete with Romney.

We’ve proven we can win this race. … I think this is because Amer­i­cans are look­ing for a blue-collar Rea­gan con­ser­v­a­tive — not a Mass­a­chu­setts mod­er­ate,” the appeal said.

Next Tuesday’s cal­en­dar runs from pri­maries in Alabama, 47 del­e­gates, and Mis­sis­sippi, 37 del­e­gates, to cau­cuses in Hawaii, 17, and Amer­i­can Samoa, 6.

The Rom­ney campaign’s deci­sion to begin adver­tis­ing in Alabama sug­gested a com­pet­i­tive race, as did a pri­vate poll and Gingrich’s deci­sion to skip a trip to Kansas to focus his efforts on next week’s South­ern pri­maries. The for­mer House speaker cap­tured the pri­mary in his home state of Geor­gia on Tues­day, and he faces nearly a must-win sit­u­a­tion next week if he is to avoid a cho­rus of sug­ges­tions that he quit the race.

In Mont­gomery, Ala., he crit­i­cized both Rom­ney and San­to­rum. He said the for­mer is a mod­er­ate in the mold of Bob Dole and John McCain, both of whom led the party to defeats in pres­i­den­tial elections.

As for San­to­rum, he said, “I am not going to Wash­ing­ton to be a good team mem­ber. I’m going to Wash­ing­ton to change Wash­ing­ton.” That was a ref­er­ence to the for­mer senator’s recent debate state­ment that he voted for Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Edu­ca­tion bill even though he opposed it, because he wanted to help the GOP team.

Posted by AP News on Mar 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.