GOP sort of starts to rally around Romney
WASHINGTON — Republican party leaders are starting to rally around Mitt Romney, but it’s not exactly a stampede of support for the expected GOP presidential nominee.
With Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich out of the race, Romney is his party’s pick to take on President Barack Obama this fall, barring a catastrophe. While Romney talks like the nominee, the former Massachusetts governor has work to do to round up enough convention delegates to make it official.
Romney has 856 delegates, according to The Associated Press count. That’s 288 short of the 1,144 he needs to win the nomination. Romney could get about 100 delegates from Tuesday’s primaries in North Carolina, Indiana and West Virginia, if he dominates the voting in all three states.
But unless he persuades a lot more Santorum and Gingrich delegates to switch allegiances, Romney might not clinch until the Texas primary May 29. On Sunday, Romney lost 11 delegates to Texas Rep. Ron Paul when Paul’s supporters won control of the Maine GOP convention and elected Paul delegates to the party’s national convention.
Romney, Obama sling similar insults at each other to see what sticks
WASHINGTON — He’s a smug, Harvard-trained elitist who doesn’t get how regular Americans are struggling these days. More extreme than he lets on, he’s keeping his true agenda hidden until after Election Day. He’s clueless about fixing the economy, over his head on foreign policy. Who is he?
Your answer will help decide the next president.
Is it Barack Obama, as seen by Mitt Romney? Or Romney, the way Obama depicts him? For all their liberal versus conservative differences, when the two presidential contenders describe each other, they sound like they’re ragging on the same flawed guy. Or mirror images of that guy.
Will voters prefer the man waving with his left hand or his right?
Blame it on two cautious candidates with more traits in common than their disparate early biographies would suggest.
Georgia’s patriarch baptizes 400 babies
TBILISI, Georgia — The patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church presided over the baptism of hundreds of babies in a Tbilisi cathedral on Sunday as part of an effort credited with helping raise the birth rate in this former Soviet nation.
Patriarch Ilia II has promised to become the godfather of all babies born into Orthodox Christian families who already have two or more children. Since he began the mass baptisms in 2008, he has gained nearly 11,000 godchildren.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has said the patriarch deserves much of the credit for the rising birth rate, which in 2010 was 25 percent higher than in 2005. The number of abortions also declined by nearly 50 percent over the same five-year period.
Parents of the 400 babies baptized by an array of priests Sunday said the patriarch was instrumental in their decision to have a third or fourth child.
“This is a wonderful day for my family,” said Tamar Kapanadze, a 33-year-old father of four. “Our fourth son, Lashko, was baptized by the patriarch himself, and before this he baptized our daughter Liziko. This is why we decided to have a fourth child.”
Actor known as Goober Pyle dies in Tennessee
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — George Lindsey, who made a TV career as a grinning service station attendant named Goober on “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Hee Haw,” has died. He was 83.
The Marshall-Donnelly-Combs Funeral Home in Nashville said Lindsay died early Sunday morning after a brief illness.
Lindsey was the beanie-wearing Goober on “The Andy Griffith Show” from 1964 to 1968.
By wire sources
