Romney focuses on Obama after victories

Mitt Romney is turning away from his primary opponents and towards Democratic President Barack Obama after sweeping three more Republican contests.

“There is a basic choice before us,” Romney said to cheering supporters in Milwaukee. “Our different visions for America are the product of our values and our life experiences.”

Romney’s victories in Wisconsin, Maryland and the district of Columbia widened his delegate lead and all but handed him the title of presumptive Republican nominee.

Despite pressure to leave the race, Rick Santorum vowed to fight on, urging voters in the forthcoming Pennsylvania primary to vote for “someone whose views are forged in steel, not on an Etch-A-Sketch”.

Romney did not mention Santorum on Tuesday night. Instead, Romney sought to cast Obama as an “out of touch” liberal whose personal background is hostile to a free economy.

His remarks came just hours after Obama delivered a combative campaign speech in Washington, where he attacked House Republicans’ budget plan as “thinly veiled social Darwinism” that “is antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everybody who’s willing to work for it”.

Obama called it “a prescription for decline”.

For Romney, the end of the contested primary campaign could hardly come soon enough.

“I want to have our nominee start raising money, start organising a national campaign and focus on President Obama and his agenda, because this is time for us to start focusing on him rather than standing and focusing on one another in these primary contests,” he told a radio station.

“I think we’ve had, as of tonight, we will have had almost 35 or more state or territorial contests for the nomination. Maybe it’s time to get going.”

Obama has gained in the polls in recent months, particularly among women, as Republicans vie among themselves for support from a conservative party electorate. Santorum has devoted more time to social concerns — including birth control — than Romney, who has generally stayed focused on economic issues.

Surveys indicate Americans are growing more optimistic about the overall state of the economy. Unemployment has fallen in recent months but is still at a relatively high 8.3% of the work force.

Already, the early outlines of a general election advertisement war are visible. Obama’s re-election campaign is airing ads in six battleground states that accuse Romney of siding with Big Oil “for their tax breaks, attacking higher mileage standards and renewables”.

The ads are a rapid response to $3m (€2.3m) in adverts aired by an outside group, American Energy Alliance, blaming the president for rising petrol prices.

In his campaign for the Republican nomination, Romney has collected endorsements from former president George HW Bush, Florida senator Marco Rubio, a Tea Party favourite, and representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, author of a conservative budget that Republicans pushed through the House of Representatives last week.

Romney won at least 83 delegates in the three races on Tuesday, with six yet to be allocated.

That pushed his total to 655 of the 1,144 needed to clinch the nomination. Santorum has 278 delegates, Newt Gingrich 135 and Ron Paul 51.