Super Tuesday: Mitt Romney aims to tighten grip on Republican presidential nomination

Ohio, a general election swing state that is a key test of a candidate’s
electability, remained too close to call.

Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of House who surged in January, was well
clear in the polls in his home state of Georgia, while the fourth candidate,
Ron Paul concentrated his efforts in Alaska where the small caucus
electorate increased his chances of winning.

Senior republicans are hoping that a strong performance by Mr Romney will draw
a line under a contest that has forced all candidates to pander to the
party’s right wing base, “scaring the hell” out of independent
voters that decide general elections, according to one Republican
strategist.

Endorsements for Mr Romney last weekend from two senior conservative
republicans, including the fiscally conservative Eric Cantor, the majority
leader in Congress, have added to the sense that the party leadership wants
an end to the backbiting contest.

“The word you’d have to use at this stage is: ‘Corrosive,'” said the
Republican pollster Bill McInturff after an NBC News poll showed the
Republican primary fight was steadily eroding Mr Romney’s standing among the
independent voters that will decide November’s election.

However, hopes that Mr Santorum and his fellow conservative, might step aside
and “go quietly” looked optimistic yesterday, with both promising
to fight on whatever the results.

Campaigning in Dayton, Ohio yesterday, Mr Santorum promised to press on “all
the way to the Convention”, arguing that Mr Romney’s financial
advantage had masked his weaknesses as an elitist, establishment candidate
who did not connect with ‘real’ America.

“He’s outspent me by seven or eight to one, but in the general election,
he’s not going to have a huge money advantage,” Mr Santorum argued to
an ebullient audience at a local Christian school, “I’m the candidate
that will stand up for the values that made America great.”

However despite suggestions from the Santorum camp that he might step aside to
unite the conservative vote, Mr Gingrich, also promised at the weekend that
he would stay in the race, as he looks to capitalise on forthcoming votes in
the Southern states of Mississippi and Alabama.

“Romney is trying to buy this thing,” said Mike DeWine, the Ohio
attorney general who switched support from Romney to Santorum last month,
told The Daily Telegraph “this fight will continue for a long time,
after this we’ll fight state to state.”

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