Washington: Mitt Romney on Tuesday clinched the Republican nomination, winning the Texas primary and securing enough delegates to cross the bench mark of 1,144 necessary to challenge incumbent Barack Obama in November Presidential Elections.
"We did it!" Romney told his cheering supporters, noting that "it`s only the beginning”.
65-year-old Romney surpassed the 1,144 delegates needed to win the Republican nomination by winning at least 97 delegates in the Texas primary.
"An honour and a privilege and a great responsibility," Romney said at a fundraiser in Las Vegas. "And I know the road to 1,144 was long and hard, but I also know that the road to 11-06 - November 6th - is also going to be long and it`s going to be hard and it`s going to be worth it because we`re going to take back the White House and get America right again."
However, he said that the job is not done yet.
"Our party has come together with the goal of putting the failures of the last three and a half years behind us. I have no illusions about the difficulties of the task before us," said Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.
"But whatever challenges lie ahead, we will settle for nothing less than getting America back on the path to full employment and prosperity.”
"On November 06, I am confident that we will unite as a country and begin the hard work of fulfilling the American promise and restoring our country to greatness," he said.
Romney would be declared the official nominee of the party at the Republican National Convention to be held in Tampa in the week of August 27. Romney has also become the first Mormon presidential nominee of a major party.
Romney yesterday promised the electorate that he will get things better if elected. "I can assure that if I get elected, with your help I will make things better. Now, the last four years have been a disappointment for the American people," he said at a campaign rally in Colorado.
He alleged that Obama has failed to fulfil his promises.
"The President, when he got elected, he said, look, I`m going to go out and borrow USD 787 billion and I`ll keep unemployment below 8 percent. It has not been below 8 per cent since.”
"There are 23 million Americans that are out of work or stopped looking for work, or only able to get part-time jobs and they need full-time employment. Median incomes in America have dropped by 10 percent in the last four years," he said.
"And so, this President is looking for someone to blame. Of course, he started off by blaming George Bush and that worked for a while but, you know, after three-and-a-half years, that wears kind of thin", he added.
"And so, then he started to blame Congress. But what we remember, that he had a super-majority in both the House and the Senate in his own party for his first two years. So you can`t blame Congress... This man is out of ideas, he`s out of excuses, and in November, we`re going to make sure and vote him out of office," Romney said.
He said that Obama`s campaign these days is trying to find a twig to hang onto some little excuse they can grab.
"They say, look, things are getting a little better, aren`t they? The answer is, yeah, things are getting a little better in a lot of places in this country, but it`s not thanks to his policies, it`s in spite of his policies," he said.
"You see, every recession ultimately comes to an end, but you would have expected this deep recession to come back to an aggressive turnaround, and it didn`t happen. This President`s policies made it harder for America to get on its feet again, and you know why. You go through them one by one," he said.
PTI
