Citing a need to end the infighting and focus on defeating President Obama, a growing number of top Republicans are getting off the sidelines and coalescing around GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney, helping reinforce the candidate’s aura of inevitability.
The former Massachusetts governor picked up the endorsement Thursday of former President George H.W. Bush, the latest senior party leader to press the rest of the field to bow out of the race. Bush’s wife, Barbara, is already campaigning for Romney, and their son Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida, threw his support behind Romney last week.
Romney also added an endorsement Wednesday night from popular conservative Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who previously balked at the opportunity to endorse a candidate before the Florida primaries. But while Rubio’s reluctant support adds significant star power, particularly among a growing bloc of Hispanic voters, it only fueled doubts about Romney’s ability to energize the party’s base.
Rubio acknowledged Thursday his support of Romney was primarily an attempt to avoid a bombastic showdown at the party’s national convention this summer rather than a vote of confidence in Romney’s conservative credentials. Romney’s remaining rivals, former Sen. Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, insist they can still block Romney from getting the 1,144 convention delegates he needs to lock up the nomination, and force the convention to pick a nominee.
“Do I think it’s a good idea for the party to have a floor fight in August in Tampa? And the answer is I do not,” Rubio told reporters. “I think Mitt Romney has won this primary. I think he’s going to be a fine president. I think he’s going to do an excellent job as president.”
For the same reason, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has called for Santorum and Gingrich to stop throwing daggers at Romney and for the Republican Party to start looking ahead to the race against Obama. While he insisted Romney “excited” him, DeMint stopped well short of endorsing the front-runner.
Recent conversations with Romney eased DeMint’s concerns that Romney would fight congressional efforts to scale back government, DeMint said. He’s more confident the former Massachusetts governor has come to embrace conservative ideals, though that too came with an admission that Romney lacks authenticity, a charge that has helped keep Santorum’s conservative candidacy alive.
“Romney is instinctively not necessarily a political conservative, he’s instinctively a problem solver,” DeMint told The Washington Examiner. “His well-developed second language now is conservative.”
More important for the Republican Party, DeMint said, is capturing a Senate majority, particularly a conservative majority more likely to push for a “culture change” in the chamber. Having a Republican president would matter far less if that president didn’t have a Republican Senate majority on his side, he said.
“It’s the Senate, stupid,” DeMint said. “If we don’t have the Senate, we’re going to lose every battle.”
