WAUKESHA, Wis. — Eager to shift his focus to President Barack Obama and the fall election, Mitt Romney is moving aggressively on multiple fronts to effectively bring the Republican nomination contest to a swift conclusion, with Tuesday’s primary here in Wisconsin seen as crucial in accelerating his momentum.
Coming on the same day as contests in Maryland and the District of Columbia, Wisconsin’s primary has become the latest major battleground in the Republican race and one of the most crucial tests to date for Rick Santorum, who is trying to prove that he can defeat the front-runner in an important general election state.
Both Romney and Santorum plan extensive campaign activity here between now and Tuesday in the first sanctioned winner-take-all contest of the year for the Republicans. The two leading Republican candidates, along with Newt Gingrich, were all in Wisconsin on Saturday.
“Whoever wins Wisconsin is going to have some really serious bragging rights,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, a former party chairman in this state. Asked whether the nomination battle has already entered its final stage, he said, “I think the election on Tuesday is going to be pivotal in making this determination.”
The former Massachusetts governor probably will not accumulate the 1,144 delegates needed for nomination until the end of the primary season and faces potential losses to Santorum in contests in May. But by demonstrating his superiority in a series of tests, he expects to rally the party behind his candidacy in a way that would allow him to start building for the general election soon.
Victory on Tuesday is only one part of the Romney campaign’s overall plan to force his rivals to acknowledge that he is the inevitable nominee, even if the others continue their campaigns until the primaries and caucuses end in June or beyond, as they have vowed to do.
Other efforts include:
c A concerted strategy to deny Santorum the largest share of delegates in caucus states that the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania won earlier this year. In those caucuses, there were no or few bound delegates chosen in the initial round, leaving it to the later stages of the process to determine who the national convention delegates would support. Strategists inside the Republican Party and the Romney campaign said Santorum is now in danger of losing delegates in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado and North Dakota to the forces of Romney and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. The Romney and Paul campaigns have significant organizational advantages over Santorum in these ongoing struggles.
c A plan to knock Santorum down in his home state of Pennsylvania on April 24, the next big day on the calendar. A Romney victory there would deal a devastating blow to the former senator and probably would lead to calls by others in the party for him either to quit the race or modulate his anti-Romney rhetoric for the duration of the contests. Romney supporters already are working just below the radar to tarnish Santorum in the Keystone State.
Pennsylvania is the only place among the five states that hold contests on April 24 where Santorum is given much chance of winning. Polls once showed him with a double-digit lead, but now show the race as a virtual tie. Beyond Pennsylvania, Romney is expected to win in Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island and New York, where a big victory would produce another haul of delegates to add to his already substantial lead.
c A continuation of the endorsement strategy that has kicked into high gear in the days since Romney won the Illinois primary. In the 10 days since then, Romney has picked up support from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the latter two held in high esteem by tea party activists. Romney also held a joint appearance last week with President George H.W. Bush and Bush’s wife, Barbara, with the former president urging Romney’s rivals to start thinking about folding up their campaigns for the good of the party.
Victory in Wisconsin and a big day on April 24 probably would add to the chorus of voices urging the party to rally around Romney and could begin to bring more formal links between the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee, whose officials have been preparing for the general election while remaining neutral in the nomination battle.
c A shift in Romney’s message away from confrontations with his rivals to the choices he sees in the general election. That began Friday with a fresh stump speech in Appleton, Wis., and will continue with upcoming addresses in which he takes principal aim at the president and his policies.
“I think Romney’s in a formidable position,” said Ralph Reed, who heads the Faith and Freedom Coalition that hosted a forum Saturday where Romney, Santorum and Gingrich spoke. “I think both arithmetically and in terms of some of the recent endorsements he’s gotten … If he’s going to be stopped from being the nominee, I think it’s either going to have to happen here or the dynamic is going to have to change pretty shortly.”
But even before Tuesday’s contests, the tenor of the race has shifted noticeably. Already some of Romney’s rivals have begun to recede. Talk of a brokered or open convention has faded.
“We should be at least the middle of the end stage and I think we probably are,” said Vin Weber, a former House member and supporter of Romney. “Newt’s campaign is essentially over and the only question is when he declares it over. Santorum’s not quite in that position, but it’s becoming clear to everybody (that Romney likely will win). This is really down to Newt and Rick. There’s really nothing that can force them out.”
Gingrich has formally scaled back his campaign because of money problems. He has said he will remain in the race until the GOP convention in Tampa, but he has softened his criticism of the former governor and started to put greater emphasis on efforts to defeat Obama in November.
The former House speaker has concluded that he is not going to be president and is prepared to endorse Romney once he gets to 1,144 delegates, according to an official familiar with his thinking. His focus now is on big ideas to improve the country and strategies designed to help Republicans defeat Obama.
Santorum remains on the attack. Speaking at a forum hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition on Saturday morning, he again charged that Romney, as the party’s nominee, would give away the two biggest issues that should shape the Republican message. He said that on both health care and energy policy, Romney’s past positions make him too similar to Obama to make an effective general election case against the president.
“Governor Romney said he’s going to run as a conservative in response to the Etch a Sketch stuff,” Santorum said, referring to a Romney aide’s description of how his candidate could start the fall campaign with a clean slate. “I’m not going to run as a conservative. I am a conservative.”