By JOHN SULLIVAN and MICHAEL LUO
Published: February 7, 2008
Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who sought to position himself as the true conservative choice for the Republican presidential nomination, announced Thursday afternoon that he had ended his campaign.
Mr. Romney, who had vowed to press on despite disappointing results in the Super Tuesday primary contests, made the announcement at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.
In a speech that touched on the messages of his campaign, Mr. Romney said he had come to his decision to help unify the Republican Party, and he charged that Democratic candidates, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, would not pursue the war in Iraq.
“Because I love America, in this time of war, I feel I have to stand aside for our party and our country,” he said.
Mr. Romney had hoped to use Tuesday’s results to narrow the gap between him and his chief rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona. Instead, he saw Mr. McCain widen the lead at the same time that Mr. Romney’s campaign lost ground to Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, who racked up solid gains.
Speaking before an enthusiastic crowd at the conference, hosted by the American Conservative Union, Mr. Romney said he would have preferred to continue until the Republican convention.
“You are with me all the way to the convention,” he said. “Fight on, just like Ronald Reagan did in 1976.”
But by fighting to the convention, he said, “I’d forestall the launch of a national campaign and, frankly, I’d make it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win.”
Mr. Romney faced a series of enormous challenges in the campaign, not the least of which was trying to reconcile the moderate political views he espoused as the governor of Massachusetts, a liberal state, with the more conservative views he championed on the campaign. That tension — and his decision to change positions on a number of emotionally charged issues, including renouncing his past support for abortion rights — led his rivals to continually lambaste him as a flip-flopper.
Then there was the question of his Mormon religion. After the candidacy of Mr. Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher, took off in Iowa, where it was fueled by evangelical voters, Mr. Romney was moved to give a major speech in Texas defending his faith and denouncing the rise of secularism.
And although Mr. Romney, a former management consultant, ran what many described as a textbook campaign, he never really recovered after failing to execute the original strategy of winning the first two contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, and using those wins to build momentum. Iowa went to Mr. Huckabee, and New Hampshire to Mr. McCain, who tried to paint himself as a straight talker to contrast with Mr. Romney’s flexibility.
As the campaign progressed, Mr. Romney and Mr. McCain exchanged increasingly bitter attacks. Mr. Romney charged that Mr. McCain was “outside the mainstream of conservative political thought.” Mr. McCain pointedly noted that Mr. Romney had changed his position on important issues for many conservative Republicans, including as abortion rights and gun control.
But in Thursday’s speech, Mr. Romney emphasized his agreement with Mr. McCain’s position that the United States needed to continue to pursue the war in Iraq. Arguing that the war is a critical part of the country’s battle against terrorism, Mr. Romney said the Democratic candidates “would retreat, declare defeat, and the consequences of that would be devastating.”
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Fonte: The New York Times
Publicação: 07 de fevereiro 2008
Autor: John Sullivan e Michael Luo
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/us/politics/07cnd-repubs.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
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