President Barack Obama’s administration launched a multi-front assault on Mitt Romney’s values and foreign policy credentials, while a fresh set of prominent Republicans rallied behind the party’s likely presidential nominee, further signs the general election is overtaking the primary season.
A Romney victory in today’s Republican primary in Wisconsin could all but end the battle to pick a challenger to Obama in the November election.
The former Massachusetts governor is predicting success in the upper Midwestern state as he shifts his campaign attacks almost solely to Obama and away from fellow Republicans.
Obama, who was vulnerable in his bid for a second White House term because of the ravages left behind by the Great Recession and near national financial meltdown just before he took office, has seen his prospects improve somewhat as a result of the Republican nomination fight and signs the economy is in a sustained recovery.
Even as Romney looked ever more likely to win the nomination, a defiant Rick Santorum vowed to stay in the race, saying he would not give up just because the Republican party establishment believed voters “need Mitt Romney shoved down their throats”.
The Wisconsin vote will be Santorum’s last chance to prove his strength in the US heartland, where he’s said he can challenge Obama but where Romney has beaten him consistently.
But having devoted more than a week to campaigning across Wisconsin, Santorum was scheduled to return to his home state, Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania’s primary is more than three weeks away. It’s an indication that the conservative favourite may be in retreat.
With Romney marching steadily toward clinching the nomination before the party’s convention in late August in Tampa, Florida, Republican leaders increasingly are calling for a quick end to what has become an extended and politically messy nomination battle.
The Obama camp was not wasting any time in taking the attack to Romney. Both Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden went after Romney on Sunday.
The line of attack is likely to play prominently in the Obama campaign’s general election narrative. While Obama is a millionaire, Romney, the former CEO of a private equity firm, would be among the nation’s wealthiest presidents ever elected. And he’s opened himself to criticism through a series of missteps.
Obama’s team on Sunday also seized on Romney’s foreign policy inexperience.
Biden said Obama was “stating the obvious” when he told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more latitude on missile defence after the November general election. The two presidents did not realise the exchange, during a meeting in Seoul, South Korea, last weekend, was being picked up by an open microphone.
Clinton seized on Romney’s comment that Russia is America’s “No. 1 geopolitical foe,” calling the statement “dated” and suggesting there were more pressing matters of concern in global affairs.
With about half of the state-by-state Republican nominating contests complete, Romney has won 54% of the delegates at stake, putting him on track to reach the threshold 1,144 national convention delegates in June. Santorum, who has won 27% of the delegates at stake, would need to win 74% of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination.