The large swag of delegates up for grabs in Tuesday’s Republican Texas primary could finally make Mitt Romney the party’s official candidate to challenge Barack Obama in the 2012 election.
But whether he crosses the line in Texas or not, Mr Romney has overcome months of criticism that he was a lightweight leader of a weak field and emerged from the Republican ruck as a potent adversary for the president.
“The notion that he was a weak frontrunner has not been substantiated,” says Vin Weber, a former congressman and a Romney campaign adviser. “People have misdiagnosed the race a lot over the past year.”
If political scientists had wanted to construct an identikit picture of a Republican candidate saddled with negatives, then they may have come up with someone resembling Mr Romney.
He is a north-eastern moderate, and a Mormon, at a time when Republicans are more conservative, Christian and southern than ever. Worse, the core of his signature health reform in Massachusetts mirrors the very shake-up Mr Obama is so reviled by conservatives for.
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