This morning, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich admitted defeat in the Republican Primary and called for the party to unite behind Mitt Romney.
“It’s pretty clear Governor Romney is going to be the nominee,” Gingrich told a group of North Carolina Republicans. “And I also think it’s very, very important that we be unified.”
Gingrich did not suspend his campaign or endorse Romney, though. Rick Santorum has similarly played coy, admitting that Romney won and affirming the importance of uniting behind him — but not actually endorsing the presumptive nominee.
“Yeah, absolutely, he’s the person who is going to go up against Barack Obama, it’s pretty clear, and we need to win this race,” Santorum said of Romney last night on CNN. But then the former candidate disputed the idea that those words amounted to an endorsement. “All I said was the obvious,” he told Piers Morgan.
